Saints Peter and Mark

An old tradition, preserved by the early Church historian Eusebius from a 2nd-century bishop named Papias, held that Mark had been Peter's interpreter and wrote down in his Gospel what Peter remembered of the words and deeds of Jesus. Tanzio da Varallo paints that working partnership. Peter instructs and Mark writes, and Mark's lion, his emblem as an evangelist, is there too.

The museum dates the canvas to about 1626 to 1628, and other proposals run from 1625 to 1631. Those are the years in which Tanzio decorated the chapel of the Guardian Angel in the basilica of San Gaudenzio in Novara, in fresco and in oil, between 1627 and 1629. The picture is almost square, a little over 1.2 metres each way, and the gallery bought it in 1946.