At the time that Thornhill was covering the cupola at ‘the rate of 2l. the square yard,’ Hogarth, his son-in-law, would also try his hand. He painted ‘St. Paul pleading before Felix’ for Lincoln’s. Inn Hall; where the subject, at least, is appropriate. The picture itself is curiously characteristic, not of the scene or of the chief personage, but of the painter. St. Paul loaded with chains, and his accuser Tertullus, stand in front; and Felix, with his wife Drusilla, are seated on a raised tribunal in the background; near Felix is the high-priest Ananias. The composition is good. The heads are full of vivid expression—wrath, terror, doubt, fixed attention; but the conception of character most ignoble and commonplace. Hogarth was more at home when he took the same subject as a vehicle for a witty caricature of the Dutch manner of treating sacred subjects—their ludicrous anachronisms and mean incidents. St. Paul, in allusion to his low stature, is mounted on a stool; an angel is sawing through one leg of it; Tertullus is a barrister, in wig, band, and gown; the judge is like an old doting justice of peace, and his attendants like old beggars.
In the Florentine Gallery there is a very curious series of the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul in eight pictures, in the genuine old German style; fanciful, animated, full of natural and dramatic expression, and exquisitely finished,—but dry, hard, grotesque, and abounding in anachronisms.[202]
Among the few separate historical subjects in which St. Peter and St. Paul are represented together, the most important is the dispute at Antioch,—a subject avoided by the earliest painters. St. Paul says, ‘When Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.’ Guido’s picture in the Brera at Milan is celebrated: Peter is seated, looking thoughtful, with downcast eyes, an open book on his knees; Paul, in an attitude of rebuke, stands over against him. There is another example by Rosso: here both are standing; Peter is looking down; Paul, with long hair and beard floating back, and a keen reproving expression, ‘rebukes him to his face.’ I presume the same subject to be represented by Lucas van Leyden in a rare and beautiful little print, in which St. Peter and St. Paul are seated together in earnest conversation. St. Peter holds a key in his right hand, and points with the other to a book which lies on his knees. St. Paul is about to turn the leaf, and his right hand appears to rebuke St. Peter; his left foot is on the sword which lies at his feet.
‘The Parting of St. Peter and St. Paul before they are led to death.’ The scene is without the gates of Rome; and as the soldiers drag Peter away, he turns back to Paul with a pathetic expression. This picture, now in the Louvre, is one of Lanfranco’s best compositions.[203]
When the crucifixion of St. Peter and the decollation of St. Paul are represented together in the same picture, such a picture must be considered as religious and devotional, not historical; it does not express the action as it really occurred, but, like many pictures of the crucifixion of our Saviour, it is placed before us as an excitement to piety, self-sacrifice, and repentance. We have this kind of treatment in a picture by Niccolò dell’ Abate:[204] St. Paul kneels before a block, and the headsman stands with sword uplifted in act to strike; in the background, two other executioners grasp St. Peter, who is kneeling on his cross and praying fervently: above, in a glory, is seen the Virgin; in her arms the Infant Christ, who delivers to two angels palm-branches for the martyred saints. The genius of Niccolò was not precisely fitted for this class of subjects. But the composition is full of poetical feeling. The introduction of the Madonna and Child stamps the character of the picture as devotional, not historical—it would otherwise be repulsive, and out of keeping with the subject.
There is a Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul engraved after Parmigiano,[205] which I shall notice on account of its careless and erroneous treatment. They are put to death together; an executioner prepares to decapitate St. Peter, and another drags St. Paul by the beard: the incidents are historically false, and, moreover, in a degraded and secular taste. These are the mistakes that make us turn disgusted from the technical facility, elegance, and power of the sixteenth century, to the simplicity and reverential truth of the fourteenth.
There are various traditions concerning the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. According to some, the bodies of the two apostles were, in the reign of Heliogabalus, deposited by the Christian converts in the catacombs of Rome, and were laid in the same sepulchre. After the lapse of about two hundred years, the Greek or Oriental Christians attempted to carry them off; but were opposed by the Roman Christians. The Romans conquered; and the two bodies were transported to the church of the Vatican, where they reposed together in a magnificent shrine, beneath the church. Among the engravings in the work of Ciampini and Bosio are two rude old pictures commemorating this event. The first represents the combat of the Orientals and the Romans for the bodies of the Saints; in the other, the bodies are deposited in the Vatican. In these two ancient representations, which were placed in the portico of the old basilica of St. Peter, the traditional types may be recognised—the broad full features, short curled beard, and bald head of St. Peter, and the oval face and long beard of St. Paul.