Perhaps the most famous painting in the Sistine
Chapel before Michelangelo’s time was one by fresco by Pietro Perugino called
“Christ Handing the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter”. Perugino carried
on what Masaccio and others had been doing before, but he was able to place his
painted forms in depicted space in a new and convincing way.
Perugino began his
work after he was commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV (reigned 1471-1484) to paint
part of a cycle of frescoes for the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The end
result was a quintessential example of Early Renaissance painting that reduced
the “flatness” of the two-dimensional surface and created a believable
appearance of a scene in three dimensions. As far as the composition is
concerned, the most striking element is line,
through which Perugino almost left us with a textbook case study of one-point linear perspective. While the
series of horizontal lines divide foreground from background, the diagonal
orthogonal lines create the appearance of depth as they converge at the
vanishing point near the doorway of the building in the background. The
result is that the scene takes place on what appears to be a large grid which
allows viewers to quite clearly ascertain the distance between figures in the
foreground, middle ground, and background. In addition, Perugino
used aerial perspective to make the hills on either
side of the temple appear to fade into the background. Both types of
perspective help the viewer understand visually that the scene is anchored realistically
in three dimensions, even though it was obviously painted on a two-dimensional
picture plane.
The subject matter
of the scene was taken from Matthew 16:13-19:
When Jesus went into the region of
Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of
Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others
Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I
am?” Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living
God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For
flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I
say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the
gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys
to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
This particular
story underscores the message of Petrine authority,
so it is not surprising that Sixtus would want this scene to be painted in one
of the important buildings of the Vatican. In the fresco, Christ is shown
in the middle, literally giving St. Peter keys (alluding to the “keys to the
kingdom of heaven”), while the apostles stand in groups behind them. Also
around them are figures in contemporary dress, who seem to witness the
momentous event. Quite clearly, the handing of the keys to Peter is meant
to frame the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession by which Christ handed
power to Peter, and hence onto the popes. Christ and Peter are the figures
of prime importance in this scene, and the importance of spiritual authority
(embodied in the keys) is particularly emphasized by the key which hangs down
vertically along the axis where the vanishing point is located.
The setting is
a piazza,
which is very spacious and airy. It is not a piazza from real life, but
instead an idealized one with a temple in the middle of it. Aided by the
grid-like ground pattern, we see separate groups of figures in the middle
ground on both left and right sides of the piazza. These are scenes from
episodes of the Gospels – one in which Christ says “render unto Caesar”, and
the other in which the crowd is getting ready to stone Christ before he
escapes.
The looming
structures in the background are particularly notable. The temple is
centrally-planned and domed, presumably with eight sides. For pilgrims
visiting the Holy Land, the Temple of Solomon was thought to be associated with
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and so what we are seeing here is based on a
similarly octagonal and domed form. On either side of the temple,
monumental arches stand decorated with reliefs and gilded surfaces. These
are triumphal arches of the kind built by the ancient Romans. These
particular arches, however, resemble one very specific arch built in Rome
around 312 A.D. – the Arch of Constantine, who reigned as emperor from 306-337
A.D. Constantine was the first emperor to legalize the profession of the
Christian faith in the empire after centuries of Christian persecution by pagan
emperors, and he was also the patron of the greatest churches of the late
antique period. One of these churches was the (Old) Basilica of St.
Peter, which became the seat of the pope in Rome. It was also thought
that Constantine was the first to officially recognize papal authority.
Again, this underscores the idea of papal authority.
Overall, the scene is one showing a critical
Biblical episode for the popes, and one which makes excellent use of
Renaissance perspectival devices to create the illusion of depth on a
two-dimensional surface. It would likely be the most important fresco
inside the chapel if not for another series of frescos painted some three
decades later by a painter who would produce one of the greatest masterpieces
in the history of art – Michelangelo, and his Sistine Chapel ceiling cycle.
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