The Incredulity of Saint Thomas

For most of its life in Spain this picture belonged to somebody else. The inventory of paintings saved from the fire that destroyed the Alcázar in Madrid in 1734 lists it as a copy after Guercino. By 1772, hanging in the new Royal Palace, it had become an original by Gerrit van Honthorst, the Utrecht painter, and it entered the museum under that name and kept it into the 20th century. The attribution to Matthias Stom, by way of a spell under Hendrick ter Brugghen, was settled only later.

The Prado dates the canvas 1641 to 1649, the years Stom was working in Sicily. The subject is the eighth day after the resurrection in the Gospel of John. Thomas had said he would not believe without putting his finger into the wound, and he is doing it, his hand steadied by Christ's own.

Light comes in hard from the left and Thomas has his back to it. The one apostle whose face is fully lit is the old man behind him, one hand thrown up.