Giovanni Baglione

Collège de l’Assomption (Montreal), Quebec, until 2020.

Giovanni Baglione was a central figure in Baroque Rome, celebrated both for his Vite de’ pittori, scultori, architetti of 1642 and for his rivalry with Caravaggio. These episodes, however, should not obscure his long and successful artistic career, which included several terms as principe of the Accademia di San Luca and major commissions for Roman churches such as St Peter’s, Santa Maria Maggiore, and Santa Maria del Orto.

Saint Peter, so closely associated with Rome, was a recurring subject for Baglione. Three related paintings from the first decade of the seventeenth century are among his most animated treatments of the apostle: two Disputes with Saint Paul and a single-figure Penitent Saint Peter. The present painting is a newly identified example of the latter type, conceived on a larger-than-life scale and executed with vigorous brushwork.

The closest stylistic parallel is the Dispute of Saints Peter and Paul of 1606, first published in 2012, which served as the model for a signed and dated 1608 version in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin, and for a single-figure Penitent Saint Peter in the same collection.

The presence of the rooster in these works is unusual in scenes of disputing apostles but traditional in single-figure depictions of the penitent saint. It refers to Christ’s prophecy of Peter’s denial in Matthew 26:34.

While the present painting is closest to the 1606 Dispute in the treatment of Peter’s head, the artist has here united the saint’s hands in prayer, eliminating the book and the prominent leg seen in the Turin painting. This concentrates attention on Peter’s emotional expression, framed by the rooster at left and a rocky outcrop at right.

Two paintings of Saint Peter by Baglione are recorded in seventeenth-century inventories: a “San Pietro piangente mezza figura” in the Meniconi collection in Perugia in 1651, and a “San Pietro col gallo originale del Baglioni” listed in the 1684 inventory of Duke Ercole II Sfrondrati. Either could refer to the present work.

Baglione’s authorship has been confirmed by Dr. Gianni Papi (written communication, 20 February 2023), who dates the painting to around 1606 and considers it superior in quality to the other known versions of the subject.