Raphael’s Liberation of St Peter

The feast of St Peter’s Chains which we keep today originated as the dedication feast of a Roman basilica on the Esquiline hill, within sight of the Colosseum. We do not know precisely when it was first built, but according to a surviving dedicatory inscription, it was already considered old when Pope Sixtus III restored it in the 430s. Apart from the Vatican basilica, it is the only ancient church of note in Rome dedicated to the Prince of the Apostles, and has custody of one of the city’s most important relics, the two chains by which Peter was held in prison.

As such, it was long one of the most prestigious cardinalitial titles. In 1467, it was conferred upon the 37th Franciscan minister general, Francesco Maria della Rovere, who continued to hold it after his term expired less than two years later, until his election to the papacy with the name Sixtus IV in 1471. A few months later, in the finest traditional of papal nepotism, he bestowed it upon his nephew Giuliano, who held it for almost 32 years, until he was elected pope in 1503, taking the name Julius II. The building owes much of its current appearance, including its façade, to renovation work done at Giuliano’s behest. (It remained in the della Rovere family continually until 1520; 28 years later, it was given to his 13-year old grand-nephew Giulio, who held it for 22 years.)

Sixtus and Julius were major protagonists of the almost unfathomably chaotic political events that took place in Italy in the later 15th and early 16th centuries, but are certainly best known today as the patrons of some of the greatest artists of the later Italian Renaissance. In 1508, Julius commissioned Michaelangelo to repaint the ceiling of his uncle’s famous chapel, which had originally been just blue with stars.

A reconstruction of the Sistine Chapel as it would have appeared when it was first dedicated in 1481.

The Creation of Adam, the central panel of the new images added to the ceiling by Michelangelo from 1508 to 1512. 

He also brought in several other notable artists to decorate a new set of staterooms, among them, Raphael Sanzio, a native of the little town of Urbino, and a distant relative of his chief architect, Donatello Bramante. But when Raphael had painted a single wall, the pope was so impressed with his work that he fired all the others so that the whole project could be given to him. Raphael was therefore working on his first room, the Stanza della Segnatura, at the very same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine chapel ceiling; he finished his project, which was much smaller, first, in 1511.

Raphael’s first painting in the Stanza della Segnatura, the so-called Disputation of the Blessed Sacrament, which would be more properly called The Triumph of Theology.

When Michelangelo was about half-way done with the ceiling, Pope Julius prevailed upon him, though much against his will, to offer a sneak preview. In an age in which imitation, that is to say, imitation of the classical past, had become the very definition of art, there was no one who had a sharper eye than Raphael for seeing what was good about another artist’s work, taking it into his own, and improving upon it. In his second room, therefore, he immediately revised his style in imitation of Michelangelo’s, not just improving upon it, but making a challenge to his rival; a challenge, which, however, would go unanswered.

In the following description, it must be remembered that the first three paintings in the room are in part the work of assistants, as was normally the case in those days. The piece de resistance, however, The Liberation of St Peter from Prison, is basically all Raphael.

The first painting is the one that has given its name to the room, the Stanza of Heliodorus, the agent of the emperor Antiochus who in II Maccabees 3 is sent to Jerusalem to plunder the temple. On the far left, Pope Julius II is carried into the scene on the sedes gestatoria by Swiss guards. (The company was instituted by Julius in 1506, and this is the oldest picture of them as papal guards.) Next to them is a group of citizens of the holy city, anxiously looking on as the high priest in the middle prays for the safety of the temple, and of the treasures that keep it running, and are used to care for the poor.

Notice the very different style of these two group of figures. The pope and the Swiss guards look like they were painted 20 years earlier, by artists of the generation that trained Raphael. The onlookers, on the other hand, are very much in the style of Michelangelo, both in terms of color scheme and pose. The great Florentine was first and foremost a sculptor, and when he was constrained to paint, he painted his human figures (the only subject he was interested in) as if they were sculptures in the sunlight. The woman in the foreground, and the father and son who have climbed up on the pillar to get a better view, are very similar to many of the artfully posed figures in Michelangelo’s ceiling.

On the right side, we see the group of angels who are sent to expel Heliodorus and his men from the temple, two flying, and one on horseback. Note the heavy musculature so typical of Michelangelo’s style, but also that they are floating, where sculptures are by definition grounded, a kind of parody.

Among sculptors, equestrian figures of military men were traditionally very prestigious commissions. Donatello, Michelangelo’s countryman and artistic grandfather (the teacher of his teacher Bertoldo di Giovanni) had famously produced the first bronze equestrian statue of the Renaissance. But Michelangelo himself had no interest in any subject other than the human body. (This is partly why the scenes from the beginning of Genesis in the Sistine ceiling contain show none of the creation of the animals.) Raphael is therefore showing off his greater versatility as an artist. But the most Michelangelo-esque of all the figures, the group on the far right, are the villains of the story, the would-be plunders of the temple.

On the next wall, which is certainly more the work of Raphael’s assistants than his own, we see Pope Julius in attendance at the miraculous Mass of Bolsena, which is traditionally said to have given rise to the feast of Corpus Christi. Again, note the great variety of styles, showing a much greater artistic versatility than Michelangelo possesses.

The third painting was the last to be cleaned during the most recent restoration project, in the early aughts, and when it was unveiled, the assessment of art historians was generally, “That’s actually a lot less Raphael than we thought it was.” It depicts the moment when Attila the Hun meets Pope St Leo I, and is persuaded to not march on Rome and sack it, as the Apostles Peter and Paul appear over the pope’s head, swords drawn, threatening to kill him. (Leo did in fact persuade Attila to spare Rome – no record of what he said to him survives – but the story of the apparition is a much later embellishment.) The extremely turbulent composition reflects the extreme political turbulence of the era, but note how the pope and his cardinals, the representatives of the ancient might of Rome, now translated into a spiritual power, remain perfectly stately and placid, and as the pope calmly raises his hand to say, simply, “Stop.”

The Meeting of Pope St Leo I and Attila the Hun, 1514. The cardinal at the far left is Giovanni de’ Medici. Julius II died before Raphael got around to painting him as Leo I, and was then succeeded by Card. Giovanni de’ Medici, who chose the papal name Leo, and was therefore painted into the image a second time, as his namesake.

The fourth wall, shows the liberation of St Peter from prison in Jerusalem, as narrated in Acts 12, 1-11, the epistle of today’s feast. The scene is divided into three parts: on the left, the guards outside the prison; in the middle, Peter as he is just about to be roused by the angel; on the right, the angel leading him safely out of the prison.

Notice how the scene with the guards on the left is illuminated by three different sources of light, but Raphael does not rely very heavily on any one of them. The moon is a partial moon, and covered by a cloud; the sunset is late, and largely blocked by the soldier with the raised arm. Notice also how the figure of the soldier holding the torch is very dark, as an object turns dark to the viewer when a light source is directly behind it.

Renaissance painters generally disliked and avoided night scenes, since it is difficult to find a good way to show the figures in them. But Raphael is not just showing off here that he knows three different and very clever solutions to the problem, and knows how to put them all in a single composition. This room was made as a place where the pope will meet important guests, potential future artistic patrons, and part of his message to them is, “You can lock that other guy into the Sistine Chapel for a thousand years, but he will never produce anything like this.”

As you look at the middle section, remember that this painting is a fresco, the application of watercolor on wet plaster. Once the plaster has been set on the wall and smoothed out, the artist has roughly four hours before it becomes too dry to absorb more paint, a process which requires a good deal of forward planning. It is in fact possible to paint on top of a dried fresco, but it always looks terrible if you do, and those bars in the middle section were not painted over the image; they were painted in tandem with the rest of it. And yet, Raphael not only gives us a highly realistic sense of space; he also gives us an even greater tour de force with the lighting. The light radiates off the angel and reflects off the armor of the soldier on the right, coming back to illuminates St Peter’s face and arm, as the parts of his body away from it remain dark. To do all that, while deleting about 15% of the surface with the black bars, is really the final word in special effects in fresco.

Finally, on the right side, St Peter is illuminated by the angel on one side, and dark on the other, and where Raphael uses gold light in the upper part, the reflected light on the soldiers’ armor in the lower part is silver.

Good artists do special effects; great artists do them for a reason, and there is a very good reason why Raphael has made sure to keep his viewers’ attention on this painting above all. The primary function of this room was as a waiting room for those who had come to Rome to see the pope, while the Segnatura next door was his primary office. The other three stories show us God’s protection of the Church in matters both spiritual and temporal, and the Pope as his chosen protector of the Faith.

Every person seeing this painting would have known the rest of the story of St Peter, how he came to Rome, and twenty-five years later, was arrested by the emperor Nero, and once again, chained up in prison. They would also have known that his chain from Jerusalem was sent to Rome in the 430s, and when it was brought into contact with the Roman chain, the two were miraculously united as one. If they had already visited the church of St Peter in Chains, Julius II’s old cardinalitial title, they would have seen the very chain itself, a witness to Peter’s two places of imprisonment.

Photo by Agnese Bazzuchi, from our 2014 Lenten stations series.

They would also have known the ancient story that Peter’s Roman jailers, Ss Processus and Martinian, were converted by him and set him free, at which the Christians persuaded him to flee the city, lest he be captured again and killed. They would have known that the Apostle began traveling down the via Appia, which ends at the port of Brindisi, on the heel of the Italian boot, where he could have gotten a boat to return to the Holy Land. But just outside of Rome, he met Christ going the opposite way, and asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”, to which the Lord replied, “I am going to Rome to be crucified once again, in your place.” And they would have known that Peter then did indeed return to Rome, and was indeed arrested again, and eventually killed by Nero.

Quo vadis, Domine?, by Annibale Carracci, 1601-2

This painting therefore reminds the viewer that when Peter was imprisoned in Jerusalem by the king, and was set to die, God set him free; but when he was imprisoned in Rome by the king, and set to die, man set him free, but God sent him back, because it was his destiny to die in Rome, and to establish the papacy in Rome. Raphael therefore keeps his viewer focused on his spectacular painting as a way of saying that it was God Himself who placed the headship of His Church, in the person the viewer is waiting in this room to meet, in the eternal city. I have often wondered how many times a chamberlain came into the room to say, “The Pope will see you now,” and was answered with, “Actually… I don’t really need to see the Pope… but I will be glad to stay here and keep looking at this astonishing painting for the rest of the year!”

I mentioned above that this painting was not just Raphael’s answer to what Michelangelo, his greatest rival, and indeed his only rival, had done in the Sistine Chapel, but his challenge to him, as if to say, “What can you do to top all of this?” If the two of them had continued to live and work in the same place, it would have been quite a thing to watch that rivalry continue. But well before the room was completed in 1514, Michelangelo had returned to his native Florence, and would remain there for over 20 years, meaning that he did not see The Liberation of St Peter until 14 years after Raphael died in 1520, and the moment had passed.

Of course, the influence of Raphael remained very powerful, and in the 16th century, various painters tried to show that they were up to the same level by painting the scene of Peter in prison through the bars. One such work, by Jacopo Coppi, can be seen in the apse of the basilica of St Peter in Chains. But the most interesting example of Raphael’s influence can be found in the work of another Michelangelo, a Milanese still-life specialist with the last name Merisi, who came to Rome in 1594, and after taking one look at The Liberation of St Peter, said to himself, “That’s what I want to be when I grow up.” Of course, an artist could hardly make his way anywhere in Italy, but especially in Rome, with the name “Michelangelo” – it would be something like trying to make your way in Hollywood today with the name Gregory Peck. (“No, I’m the other one.”) And so he generally went by the name of the village where his parents were born: Caravaggio.

A still life of a basket of fruit by Caravaggio, ca. 1599. 

The Denial of Peter, also by Caravaggio, 1610, one of his last works, and very much the fruit of his appreciation of Raphael.