San Pietro pentito

El Greco painted Saint Peter in tears more than once during his Toledo years around 1600, and the subject was pointed. The Catholic Church, pushing back against the Protestant Reformation, had just reaffirmed confession and penance as the road back from sin, and Peter, who denied Christ three times before the cock crowed and then wept, was its ideal example. Here the old apostle looks up toward a bright light, eyes brimming, the heavy keys of heaven hanging from his wrist as the sign that he was forgiven and entrusted with the Church. El Greco crops in tight, in the manner of the Byzantine icons he grew up among on Crete. Duncan Phillips bought the canvas for his Washington museum in 1922.