A "personal death" in art
The Burial of St. Lucy by Caravaggio
At first, you don’t even see her. The canvas is so vast, two-thirds of it is mottled, or holes and rocks in the foreground. But there on the ground is the girl Lucy, a broken doll figure, having been martyred with a knife gash to her throat, her small body awaiting burial by two burly men digging her grave. The Burial of St. Lucy is sheer heartbreak tearing at the viewer who joins the scene’s onlookers in their silent grief.
The artist, Caravaggio, was now on the run, a fugitive for offending the Knights of Malta so profoundly that they were stalking him. He could only paint from memory, as he had no studio, no way to diffuse the light, and without his models in Rome. The artist badly needed work. The city of Siricusa in Sicily offered it. Lucy was the saint of Siricusa, her body buried in the catacombs beneath the twelfth-century church named after her tomb. Lucy was martyred in 304 c.e. for her refusal to marry; according to church legend, she had wanted to offer her chastity to Christ.
Caravaggio had seen the old limestone quarries and from these he created the cavernous vaulted wall that imposed a sense of the ancient Greek city. As with many of the artist’s compositions, his light rakes across the painting’s inhabitants, touching the bishop’s white mitered hat, the glint of the soldier’s armor, the tenderly folded hands of a sorrowful woman, the grieving young man in a red cape. And there is Lucy, the light so delicately tipping her eyebrows, shoulder, breast, throat and pitiful outflung arm. Her fragility is contrasted with the raw, hulking muscularity of the grave diggers.
This is a personal death, not the public event that so much Baroque art had made of saints dying with comforting angels in attendance to ease their pain and assure them of their ascension to heaven in their most agonized moments on earth. Lucy is mourned by a small early Christian community of the poor and meek to stand witness, so vulnerable in their grief, so quiet the viewer can almost hear the push of the grave diggers shovels in the dirt.
Caravaggio has given us an expression of incomprehensible loss.
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Thank you very much. I look forward to more posts.
I'm so glad I made this change from the Challenge.
I'll try not to be a gasbag about art...there's too much exciting stuff...
Thank you, CTyankee! And please be a gasbag about art all you want! 
I think it was Brunelleschi who claimed in the 15th century that he had "discovered" it, but it was not new.
You might be referring to the "vanishing point" which is part of linear perspective.
It's okay, I guess, because he designed the dome of the Duomo in Florence, the signature landmark of that city:
I work in flight simulation- a very technical field. I have always been a very analytical person. I dreaded having to take that art history class, but I found I really enjoyed it (I just don't remember a whole lot of it ). I need to get back into a little study of it- it is nice to involve my brain in that is not exactly up my alley. I might just dropped by the Kimball (in Fort Worth) next payday- it has been about a decade since I did that.
such as this picture. He thought Caravaggio's studio works were much better because he felt he was too "jumpy and nervous" when he was a fugitive.
Judge for yourself. Here is one he did in his studio with as much control as he could manage to do it (he reputedly cut a hole in his roof to accommodate the light "just so."
This new series is great. I will be looking forward to your Friday posts, like I did with the Friday Challenge.
Best regards.
It's a wonderful painting, and I love reading what you've told us about it.
I love understanding what the painting is about and the artist who painted it, and under what circumstances.
I am looking forward to your weekly offerings!
I love this post so hard. Thank you! I look forward to next Friday. 
...look forward to Fridays! Thank you.
Edited to add: Please consider putting them in your journal so they are easily found if we miss a Friday or just want to read them again.
