NICOLAS TOURNIER

This painting depicts the Apostle Peter’s moment of spiritual crisis when he denies being a follower of Jesus. Peter, distinguished from the others by his old-fashioned dress, points to himself and raises a hand in a gesture of refutation, fulfilling Jesus’s prediction that he would deny him three times. Tournier, a French painter who spent seven years studying in Rome, used dramatic light and shade to instill the scene with emotional intensity and pathos.