Saint Andrew

Andrew was Peter's brother and a fisherman, and tradition has him crucified at Patras in Greece on a cross set as an X instead of a T. That diagonal turned into his sign, and by the time this canvas was painted, around 1610 to 1612, it was flying on poles all over the province where Rubens lived. The ragged saltire known as the cross of Burgundy came to the Habsburgs with the Burgundian inheritance and was the emblem the Spanish armies carried in Flanders, painted on flags and drums. Painters of his century usually showed Andrew tied to the beams with rope rather than nailed, still alive and still talking, since the legend has him preaching from the cross while he hung there. Rubens keeps the cross and gives the saint the heavy build of a working old man.