獄中の聖ペトロ

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.