Saint James the Less

Most of the apostles in this series hold the thing that killed them, a blade, a club, a saw. This one holds a carpenter's square, which the museum reads as a reference to his trade, and no instrument of martyrdom at all. He is wrapped to the chin in a heavy tan cloak that covers the whole body. Only an old face, half of it in shadow, and one hand come out of it, and the light falls on that hand so that the eye follows it straight to the square. Rubens painted the twelve panels between 1610 and 1612 for the Duke of Lerma, the favourite who governed for Philip III. After that the set disappears from the paperwork. Nothing certain is known of it until 1746, when the apostles turn up in the inventory of La Granja, the mountain palace of Isabel Farnese, queen to Philip V.