Columban Calendar Art Guide - June 2022 - Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, 1626 by Guido Reni

This Art Guide video is to be used at Step 3: Contemplation of Columban Visio Divina [https://bit.ly/3eELwTq] - A resource to help you pray using the images and Art Guide of the 2022 Columban Art Calendar. [https://bit.ly/3zia0JT].


Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, Oil on canvas (detail), 1626 by Guido Reni Italy (Louvre, Paris).


This large painting with full figures focuses on the moment described in the Gospel of Matthew 16:18–20 when Jesus proclaimed to his apostles, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.”
Peter, the “rock” upon which the Church is built, was thereby empowered to take binding actions. The keys thus refer to the authority of Peter, the first bishop, while the action is a form of the investiture of Peter as Pope of the Roman Church.
An important prototype for this painting fittingly adorns the Sistine Chapel in Rome and was painted by Perugino in 1481. The act of the giving of keys by Christ also expresses the power to forgive and to share the word of God, thereby opening the gates of heaven to all believers. The teaching of Christian forgiveness and the universal nature of the word of God, symbolised in the keys to heaven, was often juxtaposed with the image of the “Giving of the Law” by Moses in Jewish Scripture. This comparison of the old and new law is further emphasised in the background architecture where we view an old temple, while to the right behind Peter are the white marble columns of the rebuilt papal basilica of St Peter’s in Rome.