Saint Bartholomew

Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder painted this Saint Bartholomew around 1525, depicting the apostle-martyr with the large knife of his flaying—one of the most gruesome martyrdom attributes in the Christian iconographic tradition—alongside the conventional apostle's book. Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles who were said to have spread the Gospel throughout the known world, and his flaying in Armenia became the attribute that identified him in the vast apostle series that decorated churches across the Catholic world. Bruyn's apostle panels served the commission for standard church decorations—altarpiece wings, nave series, devotional panels—that was the bread-and-butter of any major workshop. His Bartholomew has the physical dignity and composed spirituality appropriate to a figure who underwent extreme martyrdom with faithful steadiness.

The apostle is depicted with his traditional attribute of the flaying knife and possibly a book. Bruyn's precise, detailed technique serves the devotional purpose of the image.