Christ's Charge to Peter

Title: Christ's Charge to Peter
Artist: Raphael
Medium: Bodycolor on paper on canvas
Size: 340 × 530 cm
Date: 1516
Location: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

John 21:15-25 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep. “The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

Pope Leo X commissioned a set of tapestry designs, or cartoons, from Raphael in 1515. The ten cartoons depicted episodes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul. Raphael here combines the two New Testament passages on which the catholic church bases its authority, that of Matthew 16:18-19 and this passage in John where Jesus orders Peter three times to feed the sheep - making it obvious that he actually charges Peter to take care of the believers. The tapestry was made in the workshop of the weaver Pieter van Aelst and is now in the Vatican Museums. Although Raphael's cartoons have been prized since the eighteenth century as independent works of art, in their own time they were seen as a stepping stone in the creation of the final object - the tapestry.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 – April 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries, although his influence on artistic style in his own century was less than that of Michelangelo. Mannerism, beginning at the time of his death, and later the Baroque, took art in a direction totally opposed to Raphael's qualities; "with Raphael's death, classic art - the High Renaissance - subsided", as Walter Friedländer put it. However, he was soon seen as the ideal model by those disliking the excesses of Mannerism.

Peter’s Denial

Title: Peter’s Denial
Artist: Michael D. O’Brien
Medium: Acrylic on hardboard
Size: 60 x 60 cm
Date: c. 2005
Location: Private collection

John 18:25-27 Meanwhile, Simon Peter was still standing there warming himself. So they asked him, “You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?” He denied it, saying, “I am not.” One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.

As noted by the artist, Simon Bar Jonah loves Jesus, but does not understand himself. He is often brave and considers himself to be very strong. The Lord has renamed him "Peter", "Kepha", meaning "rock." When the time of ultimate testing comes, however, he is astonished and horrified to find himself ruled by fear, denying that he knows Jesus. John, by making Peter's denials simultaneous with Jesus' defense before Annas, has constructed a dramatic contrast wherein Jesus stands up to his questioners and denies nothing, while Peter cowers before his questioners and denies everything. The foil Peter provides helps highlight Jesus' regal strength and authority, the hallmark of John's portrait of Jesus in his passion. Yet Peter does repent, and in this repentance are the seeds of the man who will become the rock on which the Church is built.

Michael D. O'Brien (b. 1948) is a Roman Catholic author, artist, and frequent essayist and lecturer on faith and culture, living in Combermere, Ontario, Canada. Born in Ottawa, he is self-taught, without an academic background. His paintings, in a neo-Byzantine style with a contemporary interpretation, are also featured on the covers of all of his books. His work can be seen on his website http://www.studiobrien.com/.

Peter's Denial

Title: Peter's Denial
Artist: Carl Bloch
Medium: Oil on Copper Plate
Size: 104 x 84 cm
Date: 1865
Location: National History Museum, Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark.

John 18:15-18 Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the servant girl on duty there and brought Peter in. “You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” she asked Peter. He replied, “I am not.” It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.

John mentions "another disciple" who is known to the high priest and his household. It is not said whether Peter was unable to enter the room with the other disciple, or whether he chose to remain outside. The latter seems unlikely, given Peter's character, but the arrest has shaken him. He is now sifted, beginning with a question from the woman who attended the door. She asks, literally, "You also are not one of the disciples of this man, are you?" But, of course, there would be little other reason for a stranger to be there in the courtyard in the middle of a cold night. Furthermore, the fact that she says "you also" most likely indicates that she knows the other is a follower of Jesus. In this account, therefore, it seems to be Peter's association with the unnamed disciple that draws attention to his relation to Jesus. This other disciple shows no concern about her feelings regarding his discipleship, for he not only was admitted by her, but also came back to get Peter in. While Peter's attack with the sword may have made him fearful of being recognized, he is not in a position of legal difficulty, since there is no warrant for his arrest. Nor is there indication that he was physically threatened by this woman or the others. He has no such excuses for his denial. He who a few hours earlier had said he would die for Jesus now denies any association with him purely out of fear of what people would think.

Carl Heinrich Bloch (May 1834 – February 1890) was a Danish painter. He was born in Copenhagen and studied with Wilhelm Marstrand at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi). His early work featured rural scenes from everyday life. From 1859 to 1866, Bloch lived in Italy. After many of Bloch’s paintings that were coming out of Italy were seen by influential patrons back home, he was commissioned to paint 23 new paintings for the King's Praying Chamber in the newly restored Frederiksborg Castle Chapel, in Hillerød, Denmark. Those paintings have become very popular illustrations, so much so that for over 40 years the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has made heavy use of the imagery in Bloch's paintings in its church buildings and printed media.

The Agony in the Garden

Title: The Agony in the Garden

Artist: Hans Leonhard Schaufelein

Medium: Lime panel

Size: tbd.

Date: 1516

Location: Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Mark 14:37-42 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."

Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him.

Returning the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!"

Jesus’ exhortation that “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak” is not meant in the later Gnostic or Neo-Platonic sense (the soul is intrinsically good and the body is evil), but rather that though one means well, the body is susceptible to exhaustion. In fact, there are allusions here to the servants left in charge by their master in the parable told by Jesus in Mark 13:34-37: "...keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: 'Watch!' "

Hans Leonhard Schäufelein (c. 1480 – 1540) was a German painter, designer, and wood engraver. As a painter he was much influenced by Dürer, his master, but his woodcuts are generally considered more original and more important than his pictures. He often signed his works HS with a little shovel (Schäuffelein).

Christ at the Sea of Galilee

Title: Christ at the Sea of Galilee
Artist: Jacopo Tintoretto
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 117 x 169 cm
Date: 1575-80
Location: National Gallery of Art, Washington.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection he appeared to many of his disciples. The third instance of such an appearance is recorded in John 21. While some of his disciples were fishing one morning they spotted a man along the shore. He called to them and provided fishing advice of miraculous proportions. “Therefore the disciple, the one Jesus loved, said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tied his outer garment around him, and plunged into the sea.” (John 21:7)

The Venetian master Tintoretto marshaled the unstable forces of nature to heighten the drama of this scene from John's Gospel; the wind that fills the sail and bends the mast also agitates the sea and sky, and the rocky waves meet the low clouds that blow onto the land. Christ's outstretched arm draws Simon Peter like a magnet, the charge between them creating a dynamic link between the center of the picture and the left foreground. Tintoretto has broken all forms into multiple planes, splintering the light, and frosting the edges with a brush loaded with dry, lead-white oil paint. This use of a thick, white impasto to accent the highlights as in the grassy shore at Christ's feet is a hallmark of Tintoretto's bravura style.

Tintoretto (real name Jacopo Comin; September 29, 1518 – May 31, 1594) was one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso. Indeed, fellow Venetian master Sebastiano del Piombo remarked that Tintoretto could paint in two days as much as himself in two years.

The Disciples Peter and John

Title: The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection

Artist: Eugène Burnand

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 82 x 134 cm

Date: 1898

Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris

This painting depicts events as described in John 20:3. Early Sunday morning after hearing from Mary Magdalene that the body of Jesus was gone, “Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. They ran side by side, until the other disciple ran faster than Peter and got there first.”

Here, Burnand has portrayed John, author of the gospel, as Jesus’ unnamed favorite disciple. Along with Simon Peter, the two concerned disciples rush toward the now empty tomb. The early morning light provides a literal glimmer of hope as it shines warmly across their emotional faces.

Eugène Burnand (30 August 1850 – 4 February 1921) was a Swiss painter, born in the municipality of Moudon. The human figure was at the heart of his aesthetic and religious concerns. Though his art is governed by an absolute naturalism, it is not simply a copy of reality but instead has certain aspects selected and heightened. Faces are of particular fascination for the artist. For Burnand, the character of a man could literally be read in his physical features, a system of beliefs acquired from the works of Johan Lavater, a noted Swiss physiognomist.