Saint Bartholomew the Apostle
- Style
- Late Baroque
- Date
- 1761
- Material and technique
- Oil painting on canvas
- Size
- Height 2.37 x width 1.48 m
- Location
- The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Wroclaw, Poland
- Description
- Saint Bartholomew dominates the entire composition with his foreground figure. He is depicted from the front, en pied, on axis. He is walking on brown turf, his right hand raised with a piece of his own skin in his hand. In his left hand he holds a knife on his chest. Half-naked, he has a white and grey drape wrapped around his hips, thighs and arms at the elbows. He is a man in his prime with short curly hair with a beard and moustache. At the lower edge of the painting an increasingly luxuriant strip of grass and flowers to the left in front of which lies a cannelled column and a base leaning against it. Further away are depicted four batons and a tumbling architectural detail (a cubic column capitol?). Behind the saint's back is a massive, high, perpendicular-wall plinth decorated with panels, in front of which grows a clump of grasses and flowers. Above, among steel-white clouds: to the right, two angels, the first of which is visible in its entirety.
