Saint Bartholomew
El Greco·1610
Historical Context
El Greco's Saint Bartholomew of around 1610 depicts the apostle who was martyred by flaying — the knife of his execution and the skin indicating his manner of death in the traditional iconography — with the elongated figuration and luminous paint surface of his latest period. El Greco's apostle series, of which multiple versions exist, presented each of the twelve apostles as individual studies in spiritual character, the martyrdom attributes providing identifying symbols within compositions of increasing formal abstraction. The late apostles represent El Greco's style at its most refined.
Technical Analysis
El Greco's late style pushes his characteristic elongation and color to expressive extremes, with the apostle's figure seeming to dissolve into flame-like form against a cold, silvery background.
