San Pietro in prigione

Rembrandt painted this in 1631, at 25, the year he left his home town of Leiden for Amsterdam and the portrait trade that would make his name. It is a small, dark panel, the apostle Peter alone in his Jerusalem cell after his arrest, a single shaft of warm light catching his face and folded hands while the rest sinks into near-total black. Beside him lie two heavy keys, his usual attribute as keeper of the keys of heaven, oddly useless to a man who cannot open his own cell. In the biblical account he does not stay long: that same night an angel wakes him and walks him out past the sleeping guards.