Description

The original color had been largely lost due to caustic soda cleanings. A highly detrimental cleaning method for the delicate pictorial surfaces and unfortunately very much used up to 1800. Also the dress of a beautiful turquoise blue has been restored and with it the subtle golden embroidery. Silvia Salvadori also tried to redesign part of the bouquet of pots containing inside it the flame symbol of renewed Light. St. Lucy is revered as the saint of light and considered a protector of sight. History:  The polyptych preserved at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, now composed of five separate elements, placed side-by-side but not reconciled and inserted into modern frames, presents from left to right, Saint Paul, Saint Lucy, Virgin Mary and Child, St. John the Baptist, and St. Catherine from Alexandria.  In the center cusp, the Redeemer, in the lateral four half-figures of angels, the two externally designed to resonate the Trumpets of Judgment, the others with the instruments of the Passion: the column and scourge supported by that above Paul, nails, spear and sponge from the one above Catherine, in front of which the crown of thorns hangs from the crossing of the cross arms. The tradition of the church complex of St. Francis, the concentration of the symbolic elements around the Passion and the Christ of the cusp that shows the wounds of the Crucifixion, have led to a commission by the Franciscans of spiritual orientation.  Recent surveys, however, have made it possible to ascertain the origin of the polyptych from the church served by Orvieto, where it is recalled in some inventions of the seventeenth century (Simone Martini of Marco Pierini, Alberto Olivetti, documentary appendage by Paolo Brogini Silvana Editoriale).