The ‘Repentance of Peter’ is a subject seldom treated in the earlier schools of Italy, but frequently by the later painters, and particularly by the Bologna school; in some instances most beautifully. It was a subject peculiarly suited to the genius of Guercino, who excelled in the expression of profound rather than elevated feeling. There is a manner of representing the repentance of Peter which seems peculiar to Spanish Art, and is more ideal than is usual with that school. Christ is bound to a column and crowned with thorns; St. Peter kneels before him in an attitude of the deepest anguish and humiliation, and appears to be supplicating forgiveness. Except in the Spanish school, I have never met with this treatment. The little picture by Murillo[172] is an exquisite example; and in the Spanish Gallery are two others, by Pedro de Cordova and Juan Juanes:—in the former, St. Peter holds a pocket-handkerchief with which he has been wiping his eyes, and the cock is perched on the column to which our Saviour is bound. Another ideal treatment we find in a picture by Guercino; St. Peter is weeping bitterly, and opposite to him the Virgin is seated in motionless grief. Half-length figures of St. Peter looking up with an expression of repentant sorrow, and wringing his hands, are of frequent occurrence, more especially in the later followers of the Bologna and Neapolitan schools of the seventeenth century: Ribera, Lanfranco, Caravaggio, and Valentin. In most of these instances, the total absence of ideal or elevated sentiment is striking;—any old bearded beggar out of the streets, who could cast up his eyes and look pathetic, served as a model. I recollect no picture of the Crucifixion in which St. Peter is present. ‘The delivery of the keys to Peter’ and ‘the Charge to Peter,’ (Feed my sheep,) either in separate pictures or combined into one subject, have been of course favourite themes in a Church which founds its authority on these particular circumstances. The bas-relief over the principal door of St. Peter’s at Rome represents the two themes in one: Christ delivers the keys to Peter, and the sheep are standing by. In the panels of the bronze doors beneath (A.D. 1431), we have the chain of thought and incident continued; Peter delivers the emblematical keys to Pope Eugenius IV.