La Crucifixion de saint André

Caravaggio painted this in Naples in 1607, on the run. He had fled Rome the year before with a death sentence over his head for killing a man in a brawl, and he was working fast for powerful patrons. This altarpiece was for the Spanish viceroy of Naples. The subject is the death of Saint Andrew, and Caravaggio picks a strange, precise moment from the legend. Andrew was tied to the cross with ropes and preached from it for two days, until the crowd demanded he be freed. But when the workman on the ladder tries to loosen the knots, his hands go dead, a paralysis sent in answer to Andrew's own prayer to be left to die. The old man's body is already grey. The viceroy carried the picture home to Spain in 1610, and it passed through private hands for centuries. It is now the only Caravaggio altarpiece in an American museum.