Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter

Around 1620 a local patron, Francesco Marcolini, ordered this altarpiece for the high altar of San Pietro in Valle, a church of Saint Peter in Fano, an Adriatic town then ruled by the pope. Reni's canvas was put in place in 1626. The subject is the passage in Matthew's Gospel where Christ promises Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the text on which the popes rested their authority. Reni sets it on a stone step, the old apostle kneeling in a golden cloak to take the keys while the other disciples crowd behind Christ. In 1797 commissioners of the French Republic took the painting from its altar to Paris, and it stayed at the Louvre when many seized works went home in 1815. It returned to Fano only once, for a summer exhibition in 2013.