HENDRIK VAN STEENWIJCK THE YOUNGER | The Liberation of Saint Peter

Private collection, Northern England;

Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 22 May 1998, lot 159, where acquired. 

W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M. J. Bok et al, At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat., Zwolle 2008, p. 116, cat. no. 122, reproduced in colour;

J. Howarth, The Steenwyck Family as Masters of Perspective, Turnhout 2009, p. 209, cat. no. II C.2, reproduced p. 482;

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 4, Historien und Allegorien, Münster/Hamburg/London 2010, pp. 378-81, cat. no. 64, reproduced in colour.

Prison scenes such as this were particularly favoured by Hendrick van Steenwijck the Younger, and like church interiors, they offered an opportunity for the artist to display his talent for architectural depiction, with the additional challenge of minimal lighting. The episode of Saint Peter being liberated by an angel from imprisonment by Herod Agrippa was popular in Dutch painting. In most treatments of the subject, Steenwijck placed Saint Peter and the angel prominently in the foreground, in others however – such as the present work – the protagonists are barely perceptible in the impenetrable darkness of the background.