Paul Rebukes the Repentant Peter

On 8 January 1811 the Bolognese nobleman Francesco Sampieri sold six paintings out of his family palace to the government of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy. The engraver Francesco Rosaspina supervised the packing in Bologna, and a week later the crates were in Milan. This was one of them. The Sampieri had commissioned it from Guido Reni around 1609, and it had hung in their rooms on Strada Maggiore ever since.

What they had bought was an argument between two apostles. Paul wrote to the Galatians that he had opposed Peter to his face at Antioch over whether converts still had to keep the Jewish law. Reni gives that quarrel to two near life-size figures, Peter sitting on the ground with tears on his cheeks, Paul leaning in with his hand out. Weeping penitents were much asked for in 1609. The Council of Trent had reaffirmed confession as a sacrament, and the Protestant churches had thrown it out.