Saint Andrew

In the upper right corner of this canvas, in black paint, the painter wrote his name and the year 1641. That date sits oddly. The other apostles of this series in the Prado were painted in the early 1630s, and when the museum compiled its catalogue between 1872 and 1907 it put a question mark on the line assigning this picture to the set. The description there is exact: an old man with a long white beard, facing front in black clothes, a fish hanging from his right hand. Andrew had been a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, and the fish stayed with him through 16 centuries of images. The canvas reached the crown from the Prince's lodge at El Escorial, and it measures 76 by 63 centimetres, the same small format as the rest of the series.