Saint Thomas the Apostle

El Greco built these apostle pictures almost like a product line. In Toledo he painted full sets of Christ and the 12 apostles, called apostolados, and then repeated them with small changes for other churches, his workshop helping with the copies. This Saint Thomas came from a set made for the village church of Almadrones, northeast of Madrid, in his last years. Thomas is the apostle who refused to believe in the resurrection until he could touch the wounds himself, and nothing in the picture names him: there is no attribute at all, only the raised right hand, which the museum reads as the gesture of recognition that came after the doubt. The figure is stretched tall and lit in that cold, flickering way of late El Greco, the paint thin and quick, some of it laid in by assistants rather than the master.