A fundamental aspect of Ribera’s celebrity is based on the way he breathed into his figures of Apostles and Philosophers of Antiquity the sense of them being portraits drawn from the natural; unique personalities that transmit to the viewer an effect of presence and of questioning, at the same time real and supernatural. This Saint James the Greater from the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, represented as a serene and resolute youth whose red cape emerges as a standard for his mission as the Apostle of Spain, is an eloquent example of this strongly naturalistic and mysterious painting, a compliment to the play of light and shadows, the realistic textured form and the tremendous virtuosity of Ribera’s paintbrush.