Saint Thomas

Three men and an island share the name

Thomas the apostle is identified by a lance or pike and by a carpenter's square — one instrument of death, one of trade. That combination names him, but the name alone does not. 14 titles in this collection contain Saint Thomas, and they refer to at least three different people and one place: 8 to the apostle, 1 to Thomas Aquinas, 1 to Thomas of Villanueva, and 4 to an island in the Caribbean. The attribute is what separates them once a picture exists; in a catalogue field, only the rest of the title can.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1620 and gives the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, in Orleans, France, as its location. No dimensions are recorded. It is filed under male portraiture and Religion, with Baroque as the style and Spanish as the nationality; the measured colour family is brown.

A single figure, filed as portraiture

The record indexes this as portraiture rather than as narrative, which fits a type of picture common in seventeenth-century Spain: one saint per canvas, identified by an object, half-length or standing, made to hang in a set. Nothing in this entry says what set it belonged to, and no set is claimed here. The category field is describing the kind of image, not its history.