Peter’s Denial of Christ

This painting represents the moment in the story of Peter’s denial of Christ which is most intensely infused with psychological and emotional drama. It is a unique gift of the Lukan account, for only Luke records that while Peter was speaking ‘the Lord turned and looked at Peter’ (Luke 22:61).

Rembrandt establishes two main arenas of action in his painting. Standing by the fire in the courtyard of the high priest, Peter dominates the foreground, while in the background we see Christ in the High Priest’s house, where he is being interrogated. There are many precedents—going back to early Christian times—for the combination of these two scenes within a single image (Réau 1957: 439 ff).

Peter is being approached by a servant-girl, holding a candlestick. The light of the candlestick illuminates Peter’s face and his lips, which are just beginning to form a denial. Peter has already denied knowing Christ twice—in Luke’s account, this is once to the servant-girl (vv.56–57) and later to one of the men in the courtyard (v.58). Although Rembrandt includes the servant-girl, the artist clearly intended to show Peter’s third renunciation of Jesus (again to a male accuser) (vv.59–60). At this moment, Peter remembers the Lord’s prediction at the Last Supper only a few hours earlier: ‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times’ (v.61).

Rembrandt depicts not the denial itself, but the split second preceding Peter’s words. Jesus has turned in the direction of Peter, but is not yet looking at him (v.61). We are shown an action in the process of happening; invited into the moment of maximum tension just before the climax of the drama. Peter still has the choice of recanting and withdrawing his denial.

But viewers familiar with the biblical text can complete the narrative. Peter will deny his Lord a third time and will thus condemn himself to bitter self-reproach.

References

Jefferson, Hunter. 1980. ‘Three Versions of Peter’s Denial’, Hudson Review 33.1: 39–57

Judson, J.R. 1964. ‘Pictorial Sources for Rembrandt’s Denial of St. Peter’, Oud Holland 79.3: 141–51

Réau, L. 1957. Iconographie de l’art Chrétien, vol. 2 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France)

On the night of Christ’s arrest and trial, Peter denied knowing Jesus three times in a row (Luke 22:56–60) and then he ‘wept bitterly’ (v.62). Thus, Peter becomes a paradigm of the sinner, while his subsequent tears acquire a profound and exemplary theological significance. The short phrase ‘wept bitterly’ signifies the very Christian move from sin to repentance, which marks the spiritual transformation of the sinner. It is no surprise that Peter’s tears become a celebrated subject in the history of art.

The contemporary Brazilian artist Vinícius Silva de Almeida's Tears of Saint Peter (Lagrimas de São Pedro) uses hundreds of light bulbs, filled with water, and suspended on near-invisible nylon threats. The whole creates an impression of rain, or even tears, falling from the sky. The title of the work takes its cue from a series of festivals celebrated in Brazil in June, including the feast of Saint Peter on the 29th, which heralds the rainy season and gives rural communities in particular an opportunity to thank the saints for their assistance in providing the rain.

Encountering this installation, and knowing its title, some viewers may find themselves reflecting on the interconnection of sorrow with healing in Peter’s story. It is a story that suggests that the mercy of God is infinite and even the most terrible of sins is forgivable, but also that the path to divine mercy and forgiveness passes through repentance. It is possible to view the ‘tears’ of this installation, when interpreted from a Christian perspective, as a sign of human repentance, but also as a pointer to the promise of divine grace that, for those who repent, will ‘drop down … from above’ (Isaiah 45:8).

It is striking that this paradigm of repentance should be Peter, who is distinguished among all the apostles. It is Peter who becomes the ‘Rock of the Church’, the first among the male disciples who is granted the vision of the risen Christ (Galatians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 15:5). And Peter is singled out not despite of, but exactly because of his failure. Pope Leo I (440–61 CE) called Peter the first human ‘expert’ in divine humility (Uhalde 2009). His moment of weakness is only the beginning of his spiritual journey, which will go through tears and repentance and end, Christ-like, at the cross.

References

Hansen, Kerra Gazerro. 2012. ‘The Blessing of Tears: The Order of Preachers and Domenico Cavalca in St Catherine of Sienna’s “Dialogo della divina provvidenza”’, Italica, 89.2: 145–61

Porubcan, Stefan. 1967. ‘The Consciousness of Peter’s Primacy in the New Testament’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 5: 9–39

Uhalde, Kevin. 2009. ‘Pope Leo I on Power and Failure’, Catholic Historical Review 95.4: 671–88

The crucifixion of Peter is not mentioned in the Bible, but martyrdom is implied in the message of the narrative. The motif of the crucifixion derives from early Christian texts (Eusebius Eccl. Hist. 2.25; 1 Clem. 5.4, etc.), which invariably emphasize that Peter was nailed on the cross upside down. Peter himself asked to be martyred in this way, as he felt it was unseemly for him to die in the exact manner of the Lord. Thus, the humility he learned in bitter tears on the night of Jesus’s arrest would eventually determine even the manner of his death.

The crucifixion of Peter was rarely represented in medieval art. A figure shown upside down makes an awkward candidate for the believer seeking solace from the presence of a saint, which is mostly communicated through the face. What Michelangelo did in his fresco in the Cappella Paolina was, thus, highly original—he depicted a slightly earlier moment in the narrative. Instead of representing Peter already hanging on his cross, he showed the saint nailed on a cross that was in the process of being raised. In other words, the iconographical type of The Crucifixion of St Peter was transformed to The Raising of the Cross of St Peter.

The focus on the moment before the cross is being raised allows Michelangelo to show Peter’s face, forcefully turned around and looking directly at the viewer. The saint’s gaze connects the pictorial space and the viewer’s space and makes us part of the sacred drama, an effect that falls in line with contemporary Counter-Reformation spirituality.

Here, the one who so forcefully denied his Lord while Jesus was on trial undergoes his own final trial. We now find ourselves in his place, fixed by his gaze, as he once was by Christ’s (Luke 22:61).

References

Friedlaender, Walter. 1945. ‘The Crucifixion of St. Peter: Caravaggio and Reni’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8: 152–60

Steinberg, Leo. 1975. Michelangelo’s Last Paintings: The Conversion of St Paul and The Crucifixion of St Peter in the Cappella Paolina, the Vatican Palace (New York: Oxford University Press)

Wallace, William E. 1989. ‘Narrative and Religious Expression in Michelangelo’s Pauline Chapel’, Arbitus et Historiae 19