Saints Philip and James the Less

Of the twelve apostles, these two are among the least celebrated, and they stand together here for a particular reason. In the old Western calendar Philip and James the Less shared a single feast day, because their relics were laid to rest together in one Roman church dedicated to the apostles, so painters tended to treat them as a pair. Paolo Veronese made this altarpiece in the 1560s, when he was one of the busiest painters in Venice, famous above all for vast banquet scenes crowded with silk, dogs and marble. Here the cast is pared down to two standing men. In art James the Less is usually given the heavy fuller's club he was said to have been beaten to death with. The gallery in Dublin dates the picture only to that decade. A firm year has never been established.