Saint Paul

In the lower left corner of this canvas the number 385 is painted in white. That was its number in 1772, when the new royal palace in Madrid was inventoried, the palace built to replace the old fortress that had burned at Christmas 1734, and the picture was then hanging in the sacristy of the palace chapel. Paul is given both of his attributes at once. The heavy book of his letters is clamped under one arm, and the sword he was beheaded with lies across the other, gripped by the hilt the way you would hold a tool rather than a weapon. The museum dates the canvas only to the second quarter of the 17th century and stops its author line at attributed to Ribera. The 385 is not the only number on it. A fainter 2747 sits just below, left by some later count.