Saint Peter Weeping before the Virgin

In 1682 Louis XIV bought this canvas from a dealer, the same year he moved his court for good to Versailles, and the painting was soon hanging there. By 1695 it was in the king's great antechamber, and in 1750 in the Salon of Mars, one of the king's state rooms. Guercino had painted it in 1647 for Prince Boncompagni Ludovisi. The Gospels say that after denying Jesus three times, Peter went out and wept bitterly. They do not send him to Mary, and that meeting is the subject here. Two figures appear against a dark ground. The Virgin rests her folded hands on a white cloth in her lap, and the old apostle presses another cloth to his eyes. The picture stayed at Versailles through the Revolution and first went on show at the Louvre in 1816.