The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, Murillo

This work depicts the death of the Apostle Andrew, considered one of the fathers of both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The martyrdom took place in the Greek city of Patras, where his crucifixion (in the shape of an X) was ordered by the Roman consular delegate Aegeates, who was not only a witness to the preaching of Saint Andrew and the conversions to Christianity that resulted from it but also saw his own wife declare herself a Christian, a fact he could not tolerate. He ordered Andrew to be arrested, whipped, and crucified. The work was created in the most advanced artistic phase of Murillo, in fact, it was completed in the same year of his death, a period characterized because the figures are very blurred and are more colorful, in this they resemble some techniques developed in the Renaissance such as sfumato, and others that would not be developed for centuries, like the blurring of Impressionism.