Saint Mathias

In one hand he holds the axe he was killed with. The other is raised, his eyes go up, his mouth is half open. The Prado puts him and Bartholomew at the expressive edge of these twelve panels, with Matthias the less anguished of the two. He is among the apostles at all because of a draw. After Judas, the remaining eleven put forward two candidates and cast lots, and the lot fell on Matthias. Past that, the record on him is close to empty. The panel has a gap of its own. The set belonged to the Duke of Lerma in Spain, and the museum says nothing certain is known between his collection and the royal one, where the apostles surface again in an inventory of 1746, hanging in the palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso.