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Christ's Charge to Peter
  • Date: c. 1616
  • Object Type: Painting
  • Medium: Oil on oak panel
  • Image size: 139.2 x 114.8 cm
  • Object size: 175.5 x 147.5 x 10 cm
  • Inv: P93
  • Location: Great Gallery
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Description
Provenance
Further Reading
  • In this altarpiece, Rubens conflates an episode from St John’s Gospel when Christ asked his disciple Peter, “Feed my Sheep”, with the account in St. Matthew’s Gospel of Christ’s promise to present Peter with the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. The subject was rare, although it had been used by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel Tapestries in St Peter’s, Rome.

    The painting was commissioned for the tomb of Nicholas Damant (c.1531–1616) in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the collegiate church of St Gudule, Brussels, where Danant’s patrons, Archdukes Albert and Isabella (d. 1621 and d. 1633), Governors of the Spanish Netherlands, were later buried. The subject of the epitaph painting carried particular resonance for Rubens’s client, because Damant’s father, also called Peter, was buried before the same altar. Damant, like St Peter, had distinguished himself as a loyal Catholic servant; both in his role as President of the judiciary body of the Council of Flanders and as an advisor to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella from the end of the sixteenth century.

    The picture remained in St Gudule in Brussels until sold by the church in 1800. We know more about the details of its original location from the dealer Christianus Johannes Nieuwenhuys (1799-1883) who acquired it in 1824 and sold it to the Prince of Orange, Later William II of Holland (1792-1849) in 1825. According to Nieuwenhuys, the altarpiece was kept behind a curtain and enclosed by two folding shutters, and was only on public display on feast days. The bottom corners are unpainted because the painting was originally installed behind the carved altar frontal discussed by Nieuwenhuys.