Peter and Paul and Jerusalem

*Jacquemart de Hesdin, Saints Peter and Paul Baptizing
From the Petites Heures of Jean de Berry
French (Bourges), c. 1385-1390
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Latin 18014, fol. 73r

June 29th is the combined feast of the two patrons of Christian Rome, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. These two men, the outspoken Galilean fisherman and the Jerusalem-educated sailmaker from Tarsus, the apostle who walked with (and denied and loved) Jesus and the persecutor-turned-apostle, both died in the city that was the capital of the Roman Empire within a short space of each other and the sites of their burials are among the earliest of Christian churches.  Peter is particularly honored today as the bedrock of the Roman diocese and, by extension, of the universal Church. The Gospel for today recounts the scene from the Gospel of Matthew, sometimes called “The Giving of the Keys” that includes the statement: 

“I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;

and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:18-19)

Excerpt from the Gospel for June 29, 2012

However, today I am going to concentrate on the First Reading for the Mass of today. This reading from the Acts of the Apostles recounts the miraculous liberation of St. Peter from imprisonment in Jerusalem by Herod.

"On the very night before Herod was to bring him to trial,
Peter, secured by double chains,
was sleeping between two soldiers,
while outside the door guards kept watch on the prison.
Suddenly the angel of the Lord stood by him
and a light shone in the cell.
He tapped Peter on the side and awakened him, saying,
"Get up quickly."
The chains fell from his wrists.
The angel said to him, "Put on your belt and your sandals."
He did so.
Then he said to him, "Put on your cloak and follow me."
So he followed him out,
not realizing that what was happening through the angel was real;
he thought he was seeing a vision.
They passed the first guard, then the second,
and came to the iron gate leading out to the city,
which opened for them by itself.
They emerged and made their way down an alley,
and suddenly the angel left him.” (Acts 12:6-10)
Excerpt from First Reading for June 29, 2012

The illustrations for this passage from Acts range from barebones representations in the early medieval period to complex works of the late Baroque. At the beginning representations are almost schematic. They feature the bare minimum needed to tell the story: Saint Peter, the angel and a suggestion of prison walls.

+The Liberation of Saint Peter
From Lectionarium officii s. petri cluniacensis, 
France (Cluny), c. 11th-12th Century
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS NAL 2246, fol. 113v

Initial N, The Liberation of Saint Peter
From a Gradual, Sequentiary, Sacramentary
German (Weingarten), c. 1225-1250
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M.711, fol. 25r

Later on, there is a fairytale quality to the representation: St. Peter and the angel appear much larger than the tiny symbolic prison.

+The Liberation of Saint Peter
From a Bible historiale by Guiard des Moulins,
France (St. Omer), 14th Century
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Francais 152, fol. 457v

The Liberation of Saint Peter, West Facade Tympanum
German (Regensburg), c. 1411-1421
Regensburg, Cathedral of Saint Peter

Claes Brouwer and the Alexander Master, The Liberation of Saint Peter

From a Historiated Bible

Dutch (Utrecht), c. 1430

The Hague, Koninklijk Bibliothek

MS KB 78 D 3811, fol. 213v

Tapestry, Liberation of Saint Peter
Flanders (Tournai), 1460
Part of a set commissioned for the Cathedral of Beauvais
Paris, Musée de Cluny, musée national du Moyen Âge

It remained for the Ranaissance to bring the picture into focus, as it were. The prison is now in scale (mostly) with the figures.

+Filippino Lippi, St. Paul
Visiting St. Peter in Prison
Italian, c. 1481-1482
Florence, Church of Santa Maria
del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel

+Filippino Lippi, The Liberation of
Saint Peter 
Italian, c. 1481-1482
Florence, Church of Santa
Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel

But it is Raphael, in his design for the depiction of the scene surrounding one of the doors in the Stanza d’Eliodoro at the Vatican Palace in 1514 that finally “set the scene” firmly in time and space.

+Raphael and Assistants, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Italian, 1514
Vatican City, Vatican Museums, Stana d'Eliodoro

Raphael tells the story in three sections: a scene of the guards outside the prison on the left, the scene of the sleeping Peter being roused by the angel in the center and the scene of the angel leading Peter out of the prison on the right.

+Raphael and Assistants, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Left Section

+Raphael and Assistants, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Central Section

+Raphael and Assistants, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Right Section

Leading the way to the future is Raphael’s exploration of the effects of light. We see the effect of moonlight as well as the mysterious light that emanates from the angel.

This is quite different from the flat lighting that was seen in earlier images and leads to the development, which gathered strength during the century after Raphael and leads to the Baroque experiments with light and darkness that sprang from the work of Caravaggio and his followers.

We can see this in later representations of the Liberation of Peter by Steenwyck, Carraciolo, and others.

+Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Dutch, Oil on copper, 1619
Hampton Court Palace, Royal Collections Trust

Giovanni Batista Carrociolo, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Italian, 1615
Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte

Antonio de Pereda, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Spanish, c. 1643
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

Mattia Preti, The Liberation of St. Peter
Italian, c. 1650-1660
Vienna, Akademie der bildenden Künste

Bartolome Murillo, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Spanish, 1667
St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum

And, along with the the movement introduced by the play of light, comes movement in the composition.   The angel no longer approaches sedately, instead he bursts into the picture, full of energy, to arouse Peter from sleep, to extract him from his chains and to lead him out. 

Gerrit van Honthorst, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Dutch, c. 1616-1618
Berlin, Gemäldegalerie der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Guercino, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Italian, c. 1620-1623
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

Sebastiano Ricci, The Liberation of Saint Peter
Italian, 1722
Venice, Church of San Stae

Peter was led out of prison in Jerusalem to spread the Gospel and lead the Church in its formative years.  Eventually, he came to Rome where he was again imprisoned and, finally, executed in the circus of Nero at the base of the Vatican hill, across the Tiber from Imperial Rome.  Afterwards he was buried in the cemetery across the road from his place of death and, in the year 319 Constantine began construction of a large basilican church above his grave.  Today, Pope Benedict XVI, the 265th successor of Peter, and Metropolitan Emmanuel Adamakis, leader of the Greek Orthodox in France, representing Patriarch Batholemew I of Constantinople, the successor of Peter's brother, Andrew, prayed together above Peter's tomb, while the combined choirs of the Sistine Chapel and Westminster Abbey (Anglican) sang the moving anthem "Tu es Petrus" ("You are Peter", quoted from the Gospel reading of the day) by Lorenzo Perosi (1872-1956).  It was quite a moment!

©  M. Duffy, 2012.  Selected images updated and new material added 2024.

* Indicates new material

+ Indicates updated image