Saint Pierre délivré de prison

When Louis XIV bought this picture in 1671 from Everhard Jabach, a banker and collector in Paris, nobody thought Neefs had painted it. The royal inventory of 1683, drawn up by the court painter Charles Le Brun, gave the architecture to Steenwyck and the small figures to Poelenburgh. Only in the 18th century did the name change to Pieter Neefs, the Antwerp specialist in church interiors, and his signature, Peeter Neefs, is on the painting, halfway up on the right. The Louvre thinks the figures may well be his too. The story comes from the Acts of the Apostles. An angel wakes Saint Peter in Herod's prison and leads him out while the guards sleep. Neefs sets that small miracle in a pool of light, inside a vaulted hall that looks more like a church than a jail.