Knowledge Box

The Influences and Alterations in Nicolas Tournier’s The Denial of St. Peter

HSB 304

While studying in Rome, French artist Nicolas Tournier completed a large-scale oil painting, The Denial of Saint Peter, in 1620. The scene illustrates an event described in all four gospels of the New Testament. Peter denying association with Christ served as an appropriate and popular subject to interpret for the promotion of decrees established by The Council of Trent. Nicolas Tournier derived his style from other seventeenth-century artists’ renditions of the denial, most notably, the compositional elements found in the paintings of Bartolomeo Manfredi and Valentin de Boulogne. Each of these artists set a religious scene with a group of gamblers seated at a table playing with die. Scholars indicate all three artists participated in the Caravaggesques, or Caravaggisti, therefore employed stylistic methods modeled after the Baroque artist, Caravaggio, and his Denial of St. Peter, 1610. I will argue that Nicolas Tournier worked in accordance with Post Tridentine principles, using art as a tool for depicting the articles of faith, to encourage piety and to venerate the saints. However, Tournier uniquely mobilized the Catholic Church’s message by deviating from previous depictions of the denial with the inclusion of new symbols, like an elaborate table and a vessel of smoldering coals, and placing Peter as the central, most prominent figure within the composition.