The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew (Rubens)
The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew is an oil painting on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens. He painted it in 1639, the year before he died. It was a commission from Jan van Vucht, a Flemish man living in Madrid. Van Vucht based the design on an earlier painting of Saint Andrew by his teacher Otto van Veen, made for the high altar of the Saint Andrew church in Antwerp. A drawing after Rubens’ painting, with a few small changes, is in the British Museum.
When Van Vucht died in 1639 he left the painting to the Hospital de San Andrés de los Flamencos, founded in 1594 by Carlos de Amberes. When the hospital was closed in 1844, the painting was given to the El Escorial Monastery. After the hospital was renovated, the painting was moved there again in 1891, to its new chapel. From 1978 to 1989 it was part of the Museo del Prado collection for a time. In 2019 the painting was shown outside Spain for the first time, at the International Baroque Museum in Puebla de Zaragoza from May 28 to September 1, and then at the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City from September 5 to December 8, in an exhibition about Rubens’ influence on New Spanish artists such as José Juárez, Cristóbal de Villalpando and Baltasar de Echave y Rioja. Since 1989 it has been in the collection of the Fundación Carlos de Amberes in Madrid.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:55 (CET).