The Apostle Bartholomew (Paul)

The Prado calls this one simply An Apostle, and the caution is old. The dress and the book in his hands say apostle, and the face, hair and beard resemble the Saint Matthew of several apostle sets that came out of El Greco's Toledo workshop, though that name does not sit comfortably in every one of those series. In the oldest inventories of the royal Alcázar in Madrid, and in the Prado's first catalogues, he is entered loosely, as an apostle or as a philosopher. The canvas was royal property early. It appears in 1668 in the palace vaults known as the Titian vaults, and by 1694 in the room where the king's own chamber painters worked. After the Alcázar burned at Christmas 1734, it is listed among the rescued pictures at the Convento de San Gil, and from there it moved on to the new Royal Palace and the Buen Retiro. It was painted between 1608 and 1614, and the Prado's author line reads workshop of El Greco: a shop picture that keeps the master's pictorial structure.