Saint Thomas

For most of its life in a museum this canvas answered to a different name. The Real Museo's inventory of 1857 listed it as James the Less, an old man with white hair and beard, facing the viewer, a rolled papyrus in his right hand. The Prado's catalogue of 1872 repeated that reading. Today the museum calls him Thomas and records a lance among the objects in the picture, the weapon by which Thomas was said to have died in India. Apostle sets were built so that the thing in the hand would settle the question, which is what makes the change worth noticing. Ribera painted it between 1630 and 1635, and it is one of 13 canvases from this series now in the Prado. The dating rests on how closely these apostles resemble the ragged philosophers he was painting in the same years.