Catalan School. 15th Century. "The last Communion and the Beheading of Saint Lucy" Pair of tempera paintings on wood. Framed. 32 x 33 cm each.   In two paintings of exceptional quality, with intense colors, balanced forms, and a solemn style, Bernat Martorell uses these two soft, gently arched golden windows to show us the martyrdom of two different saints: Saint Lucy of Syracuse, while receiving communion; and Saint Denis, when he was beheaded and his body rose to pray for his executioners.   With profound detail, stylized figures, and areas of golden backgrounds (the sky in both works or halos of holiness), these two windows would have been part—due to their size—of a set of others belonging to the bench or predella of a main altarpiece of a didactic and devotional nature.   Christian tradition recounts that Saint Lucy of Syracuse, after surviving several attempts at torture (including burning at the stake, removal of her eyes, etc.) during the persecution of Diocletian, was finally martyred with a stab wound to the neck, at throat level, to stop her from speaking, in 304 AD.  The Greek account, dating from the 5th century, and the Latin account, dating from the 6th to 7th centuries, are essentially identical, although they differ in some final details.  According to the Greek martyrium, Lucia was beheaded (after not dying following successive attacks and torture, or even having her eyes gouged out), while according to the Latin passio, she was martyred by one or more “blows with a sword.”   In the second panel, Saint Denis of Paris, also known as the Apostle of Gaul, the Headless Saint, or simply Saint Denis, was the first bishop of Paris, where he was martyred along with his two companions, Rusticus and Eleutherius, during a persecution prior to that of Diocletian.  According to the Lives of Saint Denis, written in the Carolingian period, after being beheaded, Denis rose and knelt to pray for his executioners. Immediately afterwards, he stood up, picked up his head from the ground, and walked six kilometers with it under his arm, crossing Montmartre along the road that would later be known as Martyrs' Road. At the end of his journey, he handed his head to a pious woman descended from Roman nobility named Casulla,  and then collapsed. The famous Basilica of Saint-Denis was built in his honor at that exact spot.   Two panels full of elegance, detail, color, and light, clearly influenced by Franco-Flemish miniatures.  With human faces expressing emotions, and both scenes set in architectural settings (a wall with battlements and a gallery of openings, and a garden wall in relief), which add volume to them.