The Repentant St. Peter

The Repentant Saint Peter was probably painted just before Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes’s departure for Bordeaux in 1824. Apostles rarely figure in Goya’s religious output, and it is not known whether the present work was commissioned by a patron or undertaken on the artist’s own initiative. Shortly after deciding to acquire The Repentant Saint Peter, Duncan Phillips wrote: “For a long time the Collection has stood in great need of an example of the art of Goya which is such a stepping stone between the Old Masters and the great Moderns.” From the moment the work entered the collection, he never tired of contrasting it with El Greco’s version of the Repentant Saint Peter, a difference Phillips distilled into two words: “flame” and “stone.”