Saint Paul

Rubens had been back in Antwerp barely two years when he painted this, after eight years of work in Italy, and the Prado's entry points straight at what came home with him. The bulk of the body is Michelangelo. The hard raking light, and a face nobody has tidied up, come out of Caravaggio, whose pictures he had studied in Rome. Paul holds a book in one hand and a sword in the other, both gripped tight, and Rubens pushes the sword to the very front of the panel so the hilt arrives first. It ends in a lion's head, which the museum reads as a sign of strength. Of the twelve apostles in the set, he and James the Greater are the two who look hardest at whoever is standing there. The support is oak, the figure turned three-quarters, the ground behind him dark and completely empty.