An attribute that is an action

Thomas the Apostle usually carries an object: a lance or pike, from the tradition about his death, and sometimes a builder's square, from the account that he built a palace. This catalogue holds an entry whose title records the substitution outright — St. Thomas, also called Saint with a Pike. The subject named here works differently. What identifies Thomas in an incredulity is not a thing he holds but a thing he does: the doubting inspection that gave English the phrase. The gesture is the attribute, and the picture is unreadable without it.

What the record holds

The entry is dated 1602 and gives Sanssouci, Potsdam, Germany as its location. Its dimensions are 107 x 146 cm, wider than tall — the close horizontal used for figures seen at half length. It is filed under group portraiture and Religion, with the styles given as Baroque and Tenebrism; the measured colour families are brown and red.

Not every Thomas here is the apostle

611 works make up this catalogue, and the word Thomas appears in 15 of the titles. Several of them are not the saint at all: Saint Thomas in the Antilles is an island, and a landscape painted there enters this collection on the strength of the same word. The apostle and the harbour are separated by the entry, not by the name.