The Martyrdom of Saint James

For a Spaniard in 1640 this was not just any saint. James the apostle is Santiago, the patron of Spain, whose shrine at Compostela had drawn pilgrims across Europe for centuries. Zurbarán, working in Madrid, painted the moment the New Testament gives him: the first of the apostles to be killed, beheaded on the order of Herod Agrippa around the year 44. James kneels and bares his neck; the executioner lifts the sword; a man in an Eastern-looking headdress stands for the authority that condemned him, with soldiers and their halberds behind. A small angel comes down with a crown of flowers and a palm, the old signs of a martyr. Off to the right, half in shadow, a dog's head looks out; no one is quite sure why it is there, and it remains one of the sharpest passages in the picture.