성 베드로의 눈물

Around 1590 El Greco was working in Toledo, a Spanish cathedral city where the Counter-Reformation was in full force and the Church wanted images that pressed the value of confession and penance. Few subjects served that better than Saint Peter weeping over his denial of Christ, and El Greco is often credited with making the repentant Peter a picture in its own right rather than a scene in a larger story. Here the apostle stands against a dark hillside, white-bearded, his eyes turned up and brimming, the golden keys of heaven hanging at his side as a sign of the man he would still become. He returned to this figure again and again; at least six versions are known. This one, thought to be among the earliest, is now in Oslo.