Saint James the Elder

Religious imagery was of utmost importance for the evangelizing project made in America. This served as a pedagogical tool that sought to promote devotion to the saints, figures held as examples of life for the faithful.

According to the biblical gospels, Santiago belonged to a family dedicated to fishing on Genezareth Lake. His mother was one of the pious women who accompanied Jesus and his apostles.

Brother of John the Evangelist, it was he who introduced him to Jesus. Santiago witnessed episodes such as the transfiguration on Mount Tabor. In him, a brilliant light began to radiate from Jesus’ face, and his clothing became white, a color that would symbolize his divinity.

Medieval traditions, as Jacobus de Voragine points out in his book The Golden Legend, attribute the epithet 'Greater' to the fact that Santiago was the first apostle to suffer martyrdom, in his case, at the hands of King Herod Agrippa I.

Spanish tradition maintains that Santiago preached in Roman Hispania and that after his martyrdom, his remains were buried in Santiago de Compostela, a city that today is a place of pilgrimage.

At an iconographic level, he is shown with attributes associated with pilgrims, among which is the staff he holds on the left side.

The presence of some stylistic characteristics in this painting suggests a possible influence of the Spanish artist José de Ribera (1591-1652) at the time of creating the work.

In this case, pictorial resources such as naturalism, tenebrism, and chiaroscuro, frequently used by Ribera, generated a dramatic effect in the work, which helped the viewer feel greater empathy towards the saint.