A sword, and the problem with it

Paul is identified by a sword and a book. The sword is unusual among martyrs' attributes in that it is also a weapon he might plausibly be shown using, which makes it the one sign in the system that can be misread as an action. The book resolves the ambiguity — an elderly bearded man with both is Paul and has been for centuries. 23 titles in this collection carry his name, which puts him just behind Peter.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1620 and gives Private Collection as its location — the field 118 entries in this collection carry, which is to say roughly one in five. No dimensions are recorded here either, and in that this entry is unexceptional: 266 of the 611 works have an empty dimensions field. It is filed under male portraiture and Religion, with Baroque as the style and Spanish as the nationality; the measured colour family is brown.

What is left when the record is thin

An entry with no measurement and no public address gives a page very little to stand on. What remains is a year, a nationality, a style label and a title, and the title is the part that carries the identification. That is a fair summary of the limit of this kind of catalogue: it can tell you who the picture is of long before it can tell you where the picture is.