Collection Highlights

When Don Juan Pimentel y Herrera, Count of Benavente, left his post as viceroy in Naples in 1610 to return to Spain, he took with him Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, painted in Naples about 1607. For more than three hundred years the painting remained in the Benavente collection in Valladolid, where it was twice mentioned and described in the palace inventory under its present title. When it appeared on the art market it was not immediately recognized, however, because Saint Andrew had traditionally-though mistakenly-been depicted on a cross with diagonal beams rather than an upright Latin cross, as in the present painting. This long-standing error was officially made known precisely when Caravaggio painted his Crucifixion of Saint Andrew.

The identification of Saint Andrew is further supported by the scene itself, which Caravaggio borrowed from The Golden Legend. It depicts the miraculous paralysis that affected the executioners commanded by Aegeas, proconsul of Patras in Greece (seen on the right), to untie Saint Andrew from the cross. Aegeas was yielding to the demand of the crowd whose sympathy the saint had won after preaching to them from the cross for two days. The miracle occurred in answer to Saint Andrew's impassioned prayer that he be allowed to die on the cross. Caravaggio subtly employed all possible means to create the impression of rigidity, as he captured the amazement on the onlookers' faces.

The woman at the lower left with a large goiter (a disease common among those living in the mountains near Naples) injects a disturbing note of naturalism, often used by Caravaggio in his religious scenes. By having the figures below the cross join the onlooker as witnesses to the miracle, the artist's deep concentration and focus on the saint transforms this scene of dramatic reality into one of devotional surrender.

Although Caravaggio never painted Christ on the Cross, he invested this Crucifixion of Saint Andrew with the same seriousness, dignity, and compassion found in the moving representations of Christ on the Cross painted by the great masters.

Leonard Hanna, Jr., Fund. 1976.2