Saint Peter

Keys, and an old man's hands

Peter is identified by keys, from the passage in the Gospel of Matthew in which the keys of the kingdom are given to him. A second convention runs alongside the first and is almost as reliable: the face and body of an ageing labourer — grey beard, broad brow, working hands — held steady from picture to picture so that the type itself becomes recognisable. In half-length images at close range, that second convention often carries more of the weight than the keys do.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates this canvas to 1629 and gives the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg as its location. Its dimensions are 63 x 75 cm — small, and wider than tall, the format of a figure seen from the chest up. It is filed under male portraiture and Religion, with Tenebrism as the style and Spanish as the nationality; the measured colour family is brown.

Tenebrism at close range

A picture built out of darkness with light admitted narrowly does something particular at this size. There is no room for a setting and no distance to cross, so the light falls on skin and cloth and on whatever the hands are holding. That is the working logic of an attribute in a tenebrist half-length: the sign has to be within reach of the figure, because nothing outside the figure is lit.