RELIGIOUS ART - Drawings from the Bible by the Old Masters! Francisco Rizi, THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. ANDREW

Francisco Rizi - MADRID 1608 - 1685 ESCORIAL

THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. ANDREW

Pen and brown ink with red-brown wash, squared for transfer in black chalk, arched top

596 by 297 mm

This Drawing is stylistically comparable to a drawing by Rizi in the British Museum, datable to the middle of the 17th century, which represents the Virgin as an expectant mother, revealing the infant Christ within her womb to Simón de Rojas.  Both drawings share the same exuberant and elaborate way of describing the draperies in pen and ink, strengthened by the point of the brush and brown wash. More

Arms thrown wide, Saint Andrew implores the heavens above while soldiers tie him to a cross in the shape of an X. His executioner, the Roman governor Egeas, watches from a classical porch above, and confusion reigns as soldiers try to push back the surging crowd. 

Andrew the Apostle (from the early 1st century – mid to late 1st century AD), also known as Saint Andrew was a Christian Apostle and the brother of Saint Peter.

Andrew preached in Scythia and along the Black Sea and the Dnieper river as far as Kiev, and from there he traveled to Novgorod. Hence, he became a patron saint of Ukraine, Romania and Russia. According to tradition, he founded the See of Byzantium (Constantinople) in AD 38, installing Stachys as bishop. He preached in Thrace, and his presence in Byzantium is also mentioned in the apocryphal Acts of Andrew, written in the 2nd century. This diocese would later develop into the Patriarchate of Constantinople.


Andrew was martyred by crucifixion at the city of Patras. Early texts describe Andrew as bound, not nailed, to a Latin cross of the kind on which Jesus was crucified; yet a tradition developed that Andrew had been crucified on a cross of the form called Crux decussata (X-shaped cross), now commonly known as a "Saint Andrew's Cross" — supposedly at his own request, as he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified on the same type of cross as Jesus had been. More

Francisco Rizi (1608–1685) was a Spanish painter born at Madrid. He was the son of Antonio Rizi, a native of Bologna, who had accompanied Federico Zuccari into Spain.

Rizi was first trained by Vincencio Carducho. He became painter to Philip IV in 1656, and held the office under Charles II, who added to it the deputy-keepership of the royal keys. A few years prior, he was appointed painter to the Cathedral of Toledo. Rizi died at El Escorial.