Saint James the Greater

The Prado hangs this canvas as Saint James the Greater, and its own catalogue entry then argues with the label. Ribera's other Saints James, one of them a few steps away in the same museum, always carry the red cloak and the pilgrim's scallop shell. This figure has neither. He has a flight of stone steps behind him, a rolled sheet of paper and the clothes of a traveller, and on that basis Jonathan Brown proposed the man is Saint Alexis, who according to legend came home from Edessa unrecognised, lived under his father's staircase and left the story of his life written on a scroll. The date beside the signature is usually read as 1631, though the museum notes that 1637 fits the handling better. The painting came from El Escorial, where it is recorded in 1667.