The saint, bound to the cross with ropes, was said to have survived two days, preaching to the crowd and eventually converting them so that they demanded his release.

[2] When the Roman Proconsul Aegeas[3]—depicted lower right—ordered him taken down, his men were struck by a miraculous paralysis, in answer to the saint's prayer that he be allowed to undergo martyrdom.

On 11 July 1610 Juan Alonso Pimentel de Herrera, 5th Duke of Benavente, left Naples for Spain, having served as viceroy of that city for seven years.

The appraiser was Diego Valentín Díaz who described the work as "a large painting of a nude St Andrew when he is being put on the cross with three executioners and a woman, with an ebony frame"[b] and it is attributed to "micael angel caraballo".

[9][10][11] The other two exemplars are undisputed copies: one (232.5 x 160 cm) at the Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo (Spain), discovered by Roberto Longhi in 1920, which was much ruined during the Spanish Civil War and whose authorship is uncertain; the other one (209 x1 51.5 cm) at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (France), long attributed to Abraham Vinck and considered to have been painted by Louis Finson since 2011.