Saint Thomas

About the artwork

The National Museum of Western Art’s Thomas belongs to the Albi apostle series. Its existence became known in 1987, after it emerged from a private collection at Albi. Sales in Monaco in 1991 and London in 1993 preceded its arrival in Tokyo in 2003–04.

The museum links the spear both to the later tradition of Thomas’s martyrdom and to the piercing of Christ’s side. Those associations give one object two temporal directions: back toward the encounter that grounds his faith, and forward toward the death tradition assigns him. This is a portrait, not an illustration of Thomas placing his hand in the wound.

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

What does John 20:28 mean?

Thomas is absent when Jesus first appears to the gathered disciples after the resurrection. He refuses their report without the evidence of the wounds. When Jesus returns eight days later, he addresses Thomas’s demand directly; Thomas answers with the confession quoted here.

John records the invitation to touch, but does not say that Thomas actually touches Jesus. His spoken recognition is the decisive event. The portrait’s spear can recall the wound without adding that unrecorded action to the Gospel.

John 20:28 places Thomas’s confession beside an attribute that recalls both Christ’s wounded body and the apostle’s later martyrdom tradition.

Sources

National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo collection record.

Image source and rights declaration.

John 20 — 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.