We thank Camillo Manzitti for confirming the attribution of the work on a photographic basis.

Provenance: Private collection, Genoa.

Among the key figures of that Genoese Baroque which constituted one of the happiest seasons of the artistic production of the Superba, which became between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century one of the main European crossroads of commerce and the arts hand in hand with the increase in the power and wealth of the city's banking oligarchy, Bernardo Strozzi was a versatile artist of extraordinary elegance, considered a real master in life, both during his stay in Genoa, where he availed himself, among many others, of the patronage of the powerful Giovan Carlo Doria, and in his subsequent exile as a fugitive to Venice, where he settled after his daring escape in 1633 and where he remained until his death in 1644.
The present painting depicts the moment in which Saint Lucia was martyred in Syracuse by order of the prefect Pascasio, during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian: in front of the saint are the iconographic attributes of the eyes, resting on a small stand, and the pyre whose flames have not touched her, while takes place the dramatic scene in which the moment of the last communion and the actual martyrdom almost overlap. For this work, Camillo Manzitti has proposed a date of around 1615, in the phase of the first activity of Bernardo Strozzi's artistic career following his release, in the new guise of "secular priest", from the Order of Frati minori Cappuccini, which he had joined in 1598: the first Baroque suggestions are included in a general scheme that still feels the influence of late 16th century Mannerism, as well as the art of Giulio Cesare Procaccini (present in Genoa during the second decade of the century with the common patron Giovan Carlo Doria) although the attention to the luministic datum and the expressiveness of the figures that will characterize the more mature production of the artist, influenced by Caravaggio's lesson, are already present.