El apóstol Andrés de cuerpo entero

By around 1591, when this small full-length panel was painted, the Greek-born artist known in Spain as El Greco had settled in Toledo and was running a busy workshop. One of its steady lines of work was the apostolado, a set of Christ and the 12 apostles made as a group for a church or monastery. This is Andrew, shown standing at full length. He is identified by the tall X-shaped cross beside him, the diagonal cross that tradition says he was put to death on and that became his emblem ever after. Because the Toledo workshop turned out these apostle series in numbers, and El Greco's own hand is hard to separate from his assistants', the panel is catalogued cautiously as attributed to him rather than firmly given. It hangs today in the monastery of Guadalupe in Extremadura, long one of Spain's great pilgrimage churches.