Religious - Crucifixion of St Peter

• Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Crucifixion of St. Peter, c. 1600-1601
• Key facts:

  Size: 230 cm × 175 cm

  Medium: oil on canvas

  Location: Cerasi Chapel: altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome (original location).

  Patron: Tiberio Cerasi, General Treasurer to the Pope
• Description

  • St. Peter is already nailed to the cross and being dragged by labourers to his eventual death – everyone in this night-time murder scene is moving. Peter was the Church’s rock – here, he is reduced to a very realistic and fairly undignified old man.
  • He does not look divine, he looks a little upset by the nail in his hand; he is otherwise calm and resigned, in contrast to the executioners, who strain under their heavy task. The faces of the labourers are in darkness – they haven’t seen God’s light?
• Iconography

  The rock in the foreground represents St. Peter’s status as the rock (foundation) of the Christian church. St. Peter opted for an upside-down crucifixion, considering himself unworthy to be martyred in the same way as Christ.
• Composition & light

  A dramatic composition with a strong diagonal emphasis. The movement of the scene is tangible as the saint’s body is hauled up in a transient moment. St. Peter faces the cross on the altar, as a reminder of his faith. St. Peter’s body is extremely foreshortened and the whole composition sees the figures packed into a contracted space. We, the laity, witness the event in close proximity.
• The black void, characteristic of Caravaggio’s oeuvre, creates psychological tension and intensifies our focus on the figures. Caravaggio has employed tenebrism (predominantly dark and mysterious) and stark tonal contrasts to throw Peter’s body into dramatic illumination and create a tense mood typical of the Baroque style.
• Style

  Italian Baroque (naturalism)
• Caravaggio’s image is naturalistic and unidealised. He was accused of a lack of decorum on occasion: the soles of St. Peter’s feet are directed towards the viewer and soiled; his characters are known to have been grubby nobodies from the backstreets of the city.
• The importance of saints and martyrs in the 17th century:

  Scenes of saints and martyrdom were particularly commonplace in seventeenth-century Italy where the Catholic Counter-Reformation spirit was relentlessly strong. Caravaggio’s controversial use of everyday people was more than tolerated in the Holy Year, 1600, and this element of the artist’s work would have appealed to the patron, Cerasi, who knew that this church, on the edge of the piazza del Popolo, would be the first to greet pilgrims entering Rome
• Function

  This painting served a specific religious purpose and a broad one: it reinforced Cerasi’s public status, secured his private legacy and helped, so it was believed, his safe route to heaven; however, more broadly, it was intended that we, the viewer, become involved in the scene and believed. An image so dramatic it would ‘revolve in our minds’ long after we’d left the chapel and our Catholic faith would be made unshakable as a result.
• Patronage

  He was awarded two lateral works for the altar of the Cerasi Chapel. 1. The Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1600 2. The Conversion of St. Paul, 1600-01 Tiberio Cerasi commissioned Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci to decorate his private chapel. Annibale was given the ceiling frescoes and the central altarpiece – The Assumption of the Virgin – and Caravaggio the two laterals in what would become a visual manifestation of the artistic rivalry between two giants of the era. Annibale’s Raphaelesque tonality contrasts starkly with the gritty realism of Caravaggio’s tenebristic scenes.
• The apostle is practically naked, which emphasizes his vulnerability. He is an old man, with a gray beard and a bald head, but his aging body is still muscular, suggesting considerable strength. He rises from the cross with great effort, turning his whole body, as if he wants to look towards something that is out of the picture (God). His eyes do not look at the executioners but he has a lost look.
• The composition of the painting is dynamic, with diagonal lines leading the eye through the scene. The figure of St. Peter dominates the foreground, creating a sense of tension and movement. The use of light and shadow creates a powerful contrast, drawing attention to the main subject of the painting.
• The whole process seems disorganized and chaotic as if the sudden heaviness of the cross caught the executioners off-guard.

  Their faces are largely shielded from the viewer making them characterless executors of an unjust act ordered by an invisible authority.

  The background of the scene looks like a wall of impenetrable darkness but it is in fact a cliff of rock. This is an allusion to the meaning of Peter's name: the "rock" upon which Christ declared his Church to be built