Page 28 - Luca Giordano - Liberation of St Peter

fresco, and painted a grandiose St Peter, his pose based
on Domenichino, whilst the figure type, and the way in
which he presents the story, look back to Ribera. The
composition, with two monumental figures, close to the
picture plane, and filling the surface, is close to the Jacob
wrestling with the angel. The angel itself has now become
far nearer to Pietro da Cortona; it is strongly reminis-
cent, in both figure type and drapery, of the angels in
Cortona’s Ecstasy of St Alessio (Naples, Gerolomini) which
had been in Naples since the 1630s.27
lll
G iordano’s first Liberation of St Peter is a brilliant ex-
pression of mood of the years immediately after the
plague, of thanksgiving for the divine intervention that
had liberated the city from tragedy and sin. It has much
27. G. Briganti, Pietro da Cortona, Florence 1962, cat. no. 73.
28. G. Maia Materdona, L’Utile Spavento del peccatore, ovvero la Penitenza ter burst asunder.’29
sollecita, Rome 1649.
29. Ibid., part 6, chapter 7, p. 46. part 7, chapter 1, p. 2.
26
of the theatrical mood, of the dazzling contrasts between
light and dark, that distinguished the endless festivities,
processions and sacred dramas that took place in these
years. It resonated with symbolic power, for the old idea
that the soul is in exile, in prison on this earth, struggling
through darkness and tribulation to salvation, was con-
stantly elaborated by preachers and devotional writers.
At the traditional festival for St Peter in Chains the
worshippers prayed to be delivered from sin, as Peter had
been freed from his bonds. The Neapolitan priest and
poet, Maia Materdona, exclaimed, in his L’Utile Spavento
del peccatore, ovvero la Penitenza sollecita, ‘what is this world,
if not a prison’28 and to him St Peter’s liberation was
associated above all with the power of comunal prayer.
For the early church had freed Peter through prayer, and
in a long celebration of this, and of the intercession of the
saints, Materdona wrote that prayer was ‘the supreme force
which girded the strong heart... it overcame iron, for, at the
prayers of the new Christians, the chains of the imprisoned Pe-
HELEN LANGDON