the legend of Saint Lucia

The story of Saint Lucia, who was sentenced to prostitution as a Christian woman and suddenly turned out to weigh so heavily that even a thousand oxen could not move her, takes place in Syracuse. Here we recognize fifteenthcentury Bruges in the scene on the right. This important painting is the only dated of this anonymous master to whom it derives its necessity. It also seems to be his earliest known work and it has the typical characteristics of his entire oeuvre: the predilection for architectural elements the almost scientific attention to flowers the slender women with their oval faces with slight slit eyes under convex eyelids the stiffly wavy hairs the broad and clichéd faces of the male figures with their big closed eyes and fleshy mouth the hard colorite. Other works can be attributed to him on the basis of these characteristics. The painting connects this master with important Flemish painters such as Dirk Bouts in whose surroundings he may have been trained.