The Denial of Saint Peter (Caravaggio)

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The Denial of Saint Peter is a painting finished around 1610 by the Italian painter Caravaggio. It is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

After the artist's many attempts to intensify the dynamics of a scene from the right, this composition offers a dramatic sequence of figures from the left. On a very dark night with deep shadows and without any indication of artificial light, a soldier wearing a helmet and armor appears from the left. He is turning his face so far round to the maid that it gets swallowed up by the darkness. The maid herself, her face obscured by the soldier's shadow, is peering at the soldier from close quarters. She is pointing a finger on her left hand and a finger on her right hand at St Peter. The soldier is also pointing a finger at him. These three fingers are sybolic of St Peter's three denials of Christ. St Peter is holding both hands against his chest in a gestion of confirmation. For the apostle, Caravaggio has chosen a model who would be ideal for an old satyr or for Socrates. The artist usually introduced heads like this for executioners.