This bearded saint is one of four in the upper tier of a polyptych (a large multi-panelled altarpiece) that Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the Dominican Church in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. He is Saint Andrew, the first apostle and a particular favourite of the Dominican Order as a preacher and a converter of non-Christians.
Crivelli has shown him as in his usual guise as an old man, clasping a cross and a Gospel book. His flowing grey locks tumble over his shoulders, and his face is deep in shadow as he gazes down at the book clasped in his right hand, his thumb thrust in to hold it open at the right place. In a masterly display of foreshortening, Crivelli has painted the cross and the fluttering pages of the book at a dramatically acute angle – compare this to the flat books held by the saints in Masolino’s A Pope (Saint Gregory?) and Saint Matthias. The love of realistic detail – the nails in the cross, the wrinkled edges of the parchment pages, the crow’s feet of wrinkles around the saint’s eyes – is typical of Crivelli, as are crisp lines of the saint’s curling beard and his crumpled robes.
Andrew’s cross here is the simple form which was usual in the Marche, rather than the X-shaped cross more often seen in scenes of his crucifixion. In his old age Andrew was thought to have settled in the Peloponnese in Greece, where he converted the wife of the Roman governor of Patras to Christianity. In fury the governor ordered him to be crucified in imitation of Christ, though he was to be tied rather than nailed to a cross in order to prolong his agony. Andrew welcomed his martyrdom. After he had hung for two days on the cross, crowds began to threaten the governor for torturing an old man but Andrew demanded to left on his cross to die.
Andrew was especially popular in the Italian Marche in the late fifteenth century. In 1460 the relic of his head was brought to Italy from Patras after the city fell to the Turks and given to the Pope by the brother of the last Byzantine emperor. It landed at Ancona, where it was carefully verified by the Pope’s representative. Then, surrounded by candles, it was sent on a stately procession through the Marche and Umbria, before being placed in a shrine in Saint Peters in Rome.
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