Beheading of Saint James the Greater.

Bartlomiej Strobel was a Silesian-born painter who worked primarily in Poland and the broader Central European artistic world of the 17th century. The Beheading of Saint James the Greater — Christ's first apostle to be martyred — was a subject of particular relevance for the Jagiellonian-influenced culture of Poland, which had strong Baroque Catholic devotional traditions. Strobel's large-scale religious works reflect the Counter-Reformation piety of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The martyr's beheading is rendered with the dramatic directness of Baroque religious narrative, with strong contrasts of light and dark organizing the composition around the central act of execution. Strobel uses broad, emphatic figure handling suited to the large-scale devotional context for which such works were typically destined.