The Crucifixion of St. Peter the Apostle
17th century, oil on canvas.

The painting is an oil on canvas depicting the Crucifixion or Martyrdom of St. Peter, measuring 3.30 X 5.10 metres, and was recovered quite by chance, in January 2023, in the second altar of the right aisle of St. Peter’s Mother Church, following cleaning and routine maintenance work in the back of the chapel of St. Peter and the paralytic, in an empty space, a sort of cavity, between the sculptural group and the wooden back that encloses it. There was no memory of the painting and its recovery was possible thanks to the expertise of a volunteer, as the canvas was completely invisible and cramped inside the empty space of the chapel.

The centred shape and dimensions of the canvas correspond to those of the side altars in the church, so the painting may have been placed in the area where it was recovered, in the current sacristy that was a private chapel in the 17th century. However, given the mobility of the works in the church and consequently the different names of the chapels themselves over the centuries, it is difficult to identify with absolute certainty, the original location. Documentary sources, including Bishop Fortezza’s visit to Modica in 1683 and a report after the 1693 earthquake, dated 1697, explicitly mention a chapel dedicated to the crucifixion and martyrdom of St. Peter. It is therefore likely that the painting already existed in the 17th century.

Neither date nor signature can be read on the painting at present. The iconography of the canvas refers in the main scene to a work by Guido Reni, The Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1604-5, from which it unmistakably takes up the compositional layout. Reni’s work was made for the church of San Paolo alle tre fontane, and is now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana in Rome. The theme of the Crucifixion is a salient episode in the life of the apostle and was proposed by great masters such as Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel at St. Peter’s and Caravaggio in Santa Maria del Popolo.

In the Modica canvas, the scene is enriched by the presence of a group of soldiers to the right and left of the protagonist and his torturers. Among the soldiers, one emerges in the foreground, dressed in Spanish-style robes, with a sort of sceptre of command ordering the execution.

In the centre of the canvas, a landscape background, alluding to the fortified walls of ancient Rome, above a little angel, gives the saint the palm of victory and the keys. Higher up, the Madonna and Christ are separated by a golden gash, alluding to the glory to which the saint is destined.

In the foreground, cut in half, characters and a man looking out of the painting, may not belong to the characters of the sacred story but to the real world. They are most probably the patrons and the painter. Overall, this is a complex scene in which the martyrdom of Peter is counterbalanced by that of the soldiers who are equally relevant and significant. The city walls then acquire prominence thanks to the empty space that makes them emerge from the background. Finally, the scene above seems to exalt the divine dimension. Several paintings in a picture whose meanings are still to be interpreted.

An important clue is the presence in the foreground, below, of the coat of arms of the Lorefice family, present in the 17th century as munificent donors of the church of San Pietro.

Due to the stylistic characteristics and the portraiture of some of the faces, one could hypothesise that the author is an artist close to Minniti’s workshop and date it around the first two decades of the 17th century.
A central theme, that of the martyrdom of Peter in the iconographic tradition, and if the dating of the painting to the 17th century were confirmed, this could open up new perspectives of knowledge of pre-earthquake pictorial production in the church, of which we currently have no evidence. Finally, the theme suggests the strong link between the collegiate church of Modica and the heart of Christianity.

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