St. Andrew with the Donor Iacopo Lauro in Prayer

St. Andrew, Jesus’ first disciple and the brother of St. Peter, poses with his attribute, an X-shaped cross. He strikes a modern, insouciant pose while reading a book with one hand. His crossed legs form a visual pun with his attribute. By contrast, the painting’s donor kneeling before him is represented in profile wearing a black cloak, which flattens his features to an almost abstract degree.

The kneeling figure is Iacopo Lauro, who commissioned this work in 1529 for his chapel in the Neapolitan church of Santa Maria delle Grazie a Caponapoli. Although the landscape and the saint’s drapery resemble Sabatini’s Raphael-inspired style, the painting was completed by his apprentice Giovan Filippo Criscuolo. As evidenced by the nonchalant St. Andrew, the younger artist possessed a liberty and inventiveness foreign to Sabatini’s vocabulary.