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oil on canvas Saint Peter and Saint Thomas (see following lot) belong to a set of thirteen panels depicting Christ and his apostles, known to scholars as the Böhler series. Painted at the end of Van Dyck's first Antwerp period, when he had achieved a considerable reputation in the Antwerp community of artists and patrons, both as an independent master and assistant to the renowned Sir Peter Paul Rubens, the Böhler series represents his development of a new and highly personal, pictorial language and foreshadows a great advance in the young artist's style. The series was together for nearly 300 years, probably first in the Utrecht collection of Henricus Vuylenborch, where they were seen in 1661 by Jacob Jordaens (see note below), and then passing into two prominent Genoese collections where they remained through the eighteenth century until they were purchased by the renowned Munich dealer Julius Böhler and ultimately disseminated by him to various collectors. The present pair are the only works from the original series that remain together. The panel depicting Christ remained in the Genoese collection of the Palazzo Rosso, but the other apostles are now housed in various locations throughout Europe. The Böhler series is unique in that it is the only set of Van Dyck's apostles that has been identified as being a once fully complete set. Van Dyck's depictions of apostles were evidently popular since quite a number remain extant. However, it is difficult to determine if these other works were painted to form a predetermined series, or alone as figure studies for larger compositions. Many of these studies, all of bust length and varying quality, were copied by Van Dyck's workshop and later were engraved. Much is known about Van Dyck's early production of these apostles, because of a lawsuit concerning the authenticity of one such series in Antwerp from 1660-61. The litigation was instigated by Franciscus Hillewerven, Canon of the cathedra