Saint James the Greater

From 1617 Spain argued in public about its patron saint. Teresa of Ávila, canonised in 1622, had powerful backers who wanted her to share the office with Saint James. Pope Urban VIII granted the shared patronage in 1627 and revoked it in January 1630, leaving James alone in the post. Ribera painted this canvas in the years straight after, between 1630 and 1635. The museum's old catalogue describes a young bearded man facing the viewer in pilgrim's dress, a cape of scallop shells over his shoulders, a red cloak gathered in his left hand, the pilgrim's staff raised in his right. The patron of Spain is shown as one of the walkers who came to his own shrine at Compostela. When the royal inventory was taken between 1814 and 1818 the canvas was recorded in the measure of the day, one vara high, a Castilian yard of roughly 84 centimetres.