Saint Peter

Around 1623 Guercino's Roman years ended abruptly. Gregory XV, the pope who had called him to the city, died after barely two years in office, and the painter went back home to Cento. This half-length of Saint Peter comes from that moment of change. The plunging shadows and steep foreshortening of his Roman ceilings are gone. The apostle fills a modest canvas under a steadier, cooler light, close to the calmer manner of his rival Guido Reni that Guercino would follow for the rest of his life. Peter appears as an ageing man, the fisherman who became first among the apostles, set down with plain attention rather than drama. Today it hangs in the Vasari Corridor, the raised walkway the Medici built to cross Florence without stepping into the street.