Saint Andrew

What does Saint Andrew show?

The beams of the traditional X-shaped cross identify Andrew, but they do not dominate him. His lowered gaze and the book bring the portrait inward. The cross belongs to the later account of his martyrdom; John’s Gospel, paired here, remembers his first introduction of Simon to Jesus.

This is the privately owned original from the Albi apostle series. In the 1970s scholars knew the design through a copy and considered the original lost. It surfaced at a Monaco auction in 1991 and sold at Christie’s in London on 8 July 2021 for £4,287,500. Its return to view is one part of the larger recovery of La Tour’s dispersed apostles.

Featured in: Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names

What does John 1:41 mean?

Andrew has been following John the Baptist when John points out Jesus. After spending time with Jesus, Andrew first finds his brother Simon and says they have found the Messiah. The next verse completes the action: he brings Simon to Jesus.

The news is personal before it is public. John’s account gives Andrew the role of connecting another person with the one he has encountered. La Tour paints an individual saint, but the paired verse makes that individual inseparable from his brother.

John 1:41 recalls Andrew’s impulse to share his discovery with Simon, giving the solitary portrait a relationship beyond its frame.

Sources

Christie’s lot record.

John 1 — Berean Standard Bible. The paired text read with its surrounding chapter.

Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names. Exact-work research, history and interpretive qualifications for this reading.

Les Peintres de la réalité en France au XVIIe siècle (1934). Historical catalogue, used with the owning institution’s current attribution and dating.