List of apostolados

An apostolado (from Spanish; lit. 'apostolate'), or apostles series,^[1] is a series of individual portrait paintings of the apostles of Jesus Christ, sometimes including other figures, such as Jesus, Luke, Mary, and/or Paul.^[2][3][4][5] The first potential example of an apostolado stems from a pair of portraits of the apostles James the Elder and Philip by Albrecht Dürer in 1516, which he may have intended as a full series of twelve.^[6][7] In Spain, apostolados are a prevalent genre of art of the apostles,^[8] being popularized by Greco-Spanish painter El Greco^[9] and leading to other renowned artists of the genre such as Francisco de Zurbarán,^[10] Peter Paul Rubens,^[11] and Anthony van Dyck.^[12] Images of saints, and therefore the apostles, became popular in Catholic Europe during the Renaissance as a result of the Counter-Reformation, which in turn derived from a heavy emphasis of the Catholic doctrine of intercession of saints and opposition to Protestant iconoclasm.^[13][14]