St. Thomas, also called Saint with a Pike

A title that spells out the method

The title recorded here is unusually candid: St. Thomas, also called Saint with a Pike. It names the saint, then names the object by which he is known, and admits that the object has at times been the only name available. Thomas the Apostle carries a lance or pike, the weapon of his death by tradition, and also a carpenter's square, from the account that he built a palace. The second title in this record is not a nickname; it is the attribute standing in for the person.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1630 and gives the Louvre in Paris as its location. The dimensions are 61 x 69 cm, slightly wider than tall — a close format, the size of a half-length figure seen near. It is filed under male portraiture, with Tenebrism as the style and French as the nationality; the measured colour family is yellow.

Light as a way of naming

Tenebrism builds a picture from darkness and lets light in narrowly. In a half-length image at this scale, that method has a direct consequence for identification: only a few things are lit, so whatever the light finds — a hand, a face, the shaft of a pike — is doing the work an inscription would otherwise do.