Apostle Saint Peter

Toledo already had a habit of painting the twelve apostles. In the 16th century the painters Juan de Borgoña and Antonio de Comontes set them in half-length along the base of the high altarpiece of the church of San Andrés, talking to one another against gold. In his last years, roughly 1608 to 1614, El Greco turned that tradition into something else. He painted 13 separate canvases, Christ and the twelve, each figure alone against a plain dark ground, made to hang on their own rather than sit in an altarpiece. Every apostle got his own gesture and his own pairing of colours, so he could be recognised at a glance. Peter wears a blue tunic under a heavy golden-yellow cloak, presses one hand to his chest and holds the keys of heaven low in the other. The set in this museum was still unfinished when El Greco died in 1614, and several canvases show their bare preparatory layers. This Peter is one of the few that scholars treat as entirely by his own hand, with the workshop taking no part.