Saint Peter Penitent

(Jusepe de Ribera)

Although our emotive Saint Peter Penitent had been acquired as a Ribera in the last century, it was unknown to scholars until the last owners invited Stair Sainty Matthiesen to offer it on their behalf in 1991. Its rediscovery and subsequent inclusion in the recent Ribera exhibition held in Naples, Madrid and New York, make it clear that it was the original prototype of at least three copies. Dated to about 1630 by Nicola Spinosa in his catalogue entry on the painting, it marks the point at which Ribera turns away from the Caravaggism of the early Neapolitan period. Works such as the early Osuna Saint Peter, with which it may be compared, have the same simplicity of composition, emphasizing the monumentality of the figure, but lack the emotional depth that in this painting indicates a later date. The Saint Peter portrayed here gazes towards the heavens, his left hand in a position of gentle supplication, the right pointing to his heart, following the liturgical direction for a penitent to strike his breast during the Confession.

This episode takes place when Peter, alone and anticipating his death, begs forgiveness for his sins, of which the most egregious was his threefold betrayal of Jesus, ‘before the cock crows’ The expressive face, the eyes filled with tears, captures the immediacy of the moment when Christ’s successor, his Vicar on Earth, conscious of his own impending death, remembers the moment when he deserted his Lord, denying that he was one of the disciples. For the authors of the Gospels Peter’s betrayal of Christ ends with him going out and weeping; nothing is said of his repentance. But, for later Christian hagiographers, particularly those fourth century writers who record the story of Peter’s execution, there can have been no doubt that Peter must have repented this most terrible of sins. Hence, it is not the young man in his late twenties whom Christ had recently designated to be ‘the Rock upon which I will build my Church’, and who had failed in his promise to lay down his life for Jesus, but the old man, soon to die, filled with remorse and a sense of his own unworthiness. For the devout, this deeply inspirational work provides a certitude that forgiveness, and therefore salvation, would be open to even the worst sinners, if their repentance was sincere.

Unknown; acquired before 1891 by Robert Clarke; to Sir Ralph Stephenson Clarke; the Estate of Robert Clarke, 1993; Acquired by the Chicago Art Institute, 1993.

Ribera, Naples (pp. 168-169, number 130 in the catalogue), Madrid (pp.218-220, number 27 in the catalogue); New York (pp.88-89, number 21 in the catalogue).
Matthiesen Gallery, London, & Stair Sainty Matthiesen, NY, ‘Fifty Paintings’, 1993