DOLORES RODEIRO BOADO (Galicia, 1853-1898)."Saint James the Apostle".Carved and polychrome wood.Measurements: 113 x 47 x 28 cm.The image of Saint James the Apostle, whom we recognise by his attributes such as the book, the wooden reed with the gourds and the shells on the front of his cloak. Aesthetically, the work follows the stylistic precepts of the Baroque, as can be seen in the treatment of the fabrics that make up the tunic, or the volume achieved by the artist in the waist area. However, the face and hair reveal that this is a 19th-century work. Little is known of Dolores Rodeiro Boado's biography. She was one of the youngest daughters of the Compostela sculptor Francisco Mª Rodeiro Permui, an artist who worked in the second and third thirds of the 19th century. Except for a pause in her training when she moved to Madrid in 1884, where she studied Antique Drawing and Antique Modelling at the School of Fine Arts, her artistic education was linked to her father. In 1875 he obtained an Honourable Mention at the Regional Exhibition in Santiago de Compostela, for a Crucifix and a Saint Ignatius of Loyola.James of Zebedee or James the Greater was one of the first disciples to shed his blood and die for Jesus. A member of a family of fishermen, brother of John the Evangelist - both nicknamed Boanerges ('Sons of Thunder') because of their impulsive temperaments - and one of the three closest disciples of Jesus Christ, the apostle James was not only present at two of the most important moments in the life of the Christian Messiah - the transfiguration on Mount Tabor and the prayer in the Garden of Olives - but was also part of the small group that witnessed his last miracle, his resurrection on the shores of Lake Tiberias. After Christ's death, James, passionate and impetuous, formed part of the initial group of the early Church in Jerusalem and, in his evangelising work, he was assigned, according to medieval traditions, the Spanish peninsular territory, specifically the northwestern region, then known as Gallaecia. Some theories suggest that the current patron saint of Spain arrived in the northern lands via the uninhabited coast of Portugal. Others, however, suggest that he travelled along the Ebro valley and the Cantabrian Roman road, and there are even those who claim that Santiago reached the Peninsula via what is now Cartagena, from where he set out on his journey to the western corner of the map.