The Apostle Thomas

Albrecht Dürer.
St. Thomas the Apostle.
Engraving. Nuremberg, 1514. (BRA0253)

In 1514 Dürer also began a series of small engravings of Christ’s apostles. The first two produced were of St. Paul and St. Thomas. In the exhibited print, St. Thomas holds both a Bible and his traditional attribute, the spear with which he supposedly was martyred in Madras, India, according to the apocryphal Acts of St. Thomas. The radiant halo casts his fierce facial features into shadowy silhouette.