Saint Bartholomew

The knife in his right hand does all the work. Bartholomew was said to have been flayed alive, and the flaying knife became his standing sign, the object that tells a viewer which apostle he is looking at. The Prado counts this canvas among the strongest of its Ribera apostles. The museum's inventory of 1857 describes an old man with greying hair and beard, wrapped in a white cloak, his hands showing, the knife held in the right one. Ribera painted it between 1630 and 1635. For much of its life it hung in a working room of the palace: the royal inventory taken between 1814 and 1818 places it in the quarters of the captain of the guard at the Royal Palace in Madrid, under the number 132. That number is still on the picture, written in white in the lower left corner.