The Liberation of St Peter

Raphael’s Liberation of St. Peter in the Stanza d’Eliodoro in the Vatican constitutes a classic prototype and must have made a great impression on the young Luca Giordano from Naples when he studied it in the early 1650s. That the present composition was created with Raphael’s version in mind is clear. The monumentality and symmetry of the composition are similar to Raphael’s fresco as are the idealized nobility of the main figures and the gleaming rendering of the soldiers’ armor. The painting is Roman in concept yet Venetian in style and colour at the same time. Giordano was inspired by Raphael and reformed the old master’s monumental masterpiece.