St James as a pilgrim

El Greco was a Greek from Crete who trained in Venice and then settled for good in Toledo, and around 1590 he was painting saints one figure at a time. This is Saint James the Greater, shown not as an apostle but as a pilgrim, leaning on a traveller's staff, because his shrine at Santiago de Compostela had drawn walkers across Spain for centuries and he was the country's own patron. El Greco set him on a pedestal in a shallow niche, so the figure reads almost like a painted statue, an idea he had brought with him from Italy. It belongs to a full apostolado, a set of Christ and the 12 apostles that he and his workshop produced more than once. This one comes from an altarpiece in the Toledo church of San Nicolás.