The Incredulity of St Thomas
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
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About this painting
Christ has taken the doubter by the wrist. The hand steering Thomas's finger into the wound is his own — the proof is not seized here, it is administered.
Caravaggio brought that deep, probing touch south from German woodcuts, against an Italian taste that preferred the instant before contact. No halo, no sky, no gold: four heads in the dark, and Christ's is the most shadowed, being the least knowable.
Painted for the Roman banker Vincenzo Giustiniani, who hung it over a door. John 20:27 records the invitation. It never records the touch.
Sources: Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Bildergalerie von Sanssouci, Potsdam · Marcus Andrew Hurttig, Caravaggios Ungläubiger Thomas. Eine ikonographische Untersuchung, Saecvla Spiritalia 48 (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 2014) · Inventario Giustiniani, 1638: 'un quadro sopraporta di mezze figure con l'Historia di San Tomasso che tocca il Costato di Christo col dito … di mano di Michelangelo da Caravaggio' · Glenn W. Most, Doubting Thomas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) · Christ's head kept largely in shadow, 'as He is the person who is the least knowable'; the four heads united in one plane
Then he said to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither and see my hands. And bring hither the hand and put it into my side. And be not faithless, but believing.
John 20:27 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 42,558 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.