Guardroom with the Deliverance of Saint Peter

David Teniers the Younger

ca. 1645–47 · Oil on wood · European Paintings

Flemish painters had a long tradition of relegating religious narratives to the background of scenes drawn from contemporary life. Here, the viewer can just glimpse Saint Peter’s liberation from captivity by an angel, while in the foreground, soldiers play dice and a heap of armor and earthenware conveys Teniers’s skillful illusionism. In this way, the painting enacts the worldly distractions that can cause believers to lose sight of higher things. This painting was seized by the Nazis from Baron Karl Neuman (Charles Neuman de Végvár) in Paris and restituted to him by 1947.

Artist

David Teniers the Younger

Date

ca. 1645–47

Medium

Oil on wood

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

Gift of Edith Neuman de Végvár, in honor of her husband, Charles Neuman de Végvár, 1964