Saint Peter

The keys in his right hand are what make him Peter. The book he also holds is less usual for the saint, and the face is not a type at all; the Prado says Ribera worked from a real model with a strongly marked head, and reads that choice as what makes the holiness credible. The museum dates the canvas to about 1632. Its later life was spent indoors in Madrid, in the new royal palace built after the old one burned. The inventories move it around: a triangular inner room in 1747, the sacristy of the royal chapel in 1772, the antechamber of the infantas' ladies in 1794, and simply the antechamber between 1814 and 1818. The old entries give its size in Spanish feet, about four feet seven high by three feet seven wide.