St Peter and St Paul

El Greco painted Saints Peter and Paul as a pair more than once in his last years in Toledo, and this is one of those late versions, from around 1605. The two men founded the early Church together, though they had once quarrelled openly over how far its Jewish law should bind new converts. El Greco sets them shoulder to shoulder and makes them opposites in temperament. Paul, with the book, leans in hard and certain, his hand pressed flat on the text. Peter, holding the keys of the Church, seems softer and more hesitant beside him. By this date El Greco was in his sixties, painting in the elongated, flickering style of his final Toledo years.