A Stroll in the Gallery: The Repentant St. Peter

El Greco. The Repentant St. Peter. 1600-1605. Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C..

In April 1999, after resonating deeply with the bearded voyager ‘s supplication in Thomas Cole’s painting, I found the same gesture in El Greco’s The Repentant St. Peter. I was struck then by the sinewy muscles in Peter’s arms. This is a working man, not a pope. Of what did he repent?

Eight years later, what I remember is the simplicity of Peter’s gesture, not the painting’s vivid color or details such as the tear in the saint’s eye. It is the deeply felt humanity, not the saintliness, that moves me.

Again, I invoke the poetry of Yehudi Amichai: Gods come and go. Prayer is constant.