San Paolo apostolo

El Greco made this in his last years in Toledo, around 1610, as part of a set showing Christ and his apostles, each figure half-length and holding the sign by which you would know him. Paul is a slight surprise in such a group. He was never one of the original 12. He had persecuted the early Christians until, by his own account, a blinding vision on the road to Damascus turned him around. In these sets El Greco regularly gives Paul the place that would otherwise be the traitor Judas's. Much of the series was done with his workshop, but this Saint Paul is one of only a few he is thought to have carried through to the end himself.