Lucy is part of a series of works by Dumas in which figures lie supine, either asleep or dead, with their eyes closed and mouth open in a pose that recalls depictions of sexual consummation. Each one is drawn from a ‘found’ image. Lucy is based on a detail from Caravaggio’s 1608 painting The Burial of St Lucy, which Dumas has reworked in a style that suggests the flatness of a morgue photograph. According to legend, the saint was brutally tortured, blinded, and finally stabbed in the throat.