The Tears of Saint Peter

In the years after the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church in Spain pressed one idea hard: a sinner is forgiven through confession and penance, the very sacrament Protestants had thrown out. El Greco answered with Peter, the apostle who denied Christ three times on the night of the arrest, then broke down and wept. Before him those tears were rarely a picture in their own right. He made them his subject and came back to it again and again. Here the old man tilts his face upward, eyes wet, hands clasped, begging to be forgiven. At his side hang two heavy golden keys, the keys of heaven that mark him as the first pope. So many people wanted the image that several versions survive in his own hand, this late one painted in Toledo, where he spent his final years.