Christ Presenting the Keys to Saint Peter

Details

Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (Savona 1737-1795 Genoa)
Christ Presenting the Keys to Saint Peter
oil on canvas
63 ¼ x 41 5/8 in. (160.5 x 105.6 cm.)

Provenance

John Franklin Dimon, Lima, Peru and Riverhead, New York, circa 1860, and by descent to his nephew
Frederic D. Philips, New York, and by whom given in June 1935 to
The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York; Sotheby's, New York, 14 October 1999, lot 123, where acquired after the sale by the La Salle University Art Museum.

Literature

B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge, 1972, pp. 238, 610-611, as Roman school, 18th century.
C.P. Wistar, La Salle University Art Museum: Guide to the Collection, Philadelphia, 2002, p. 46, illustrated.

Lot Essay

At the time of its sale from the collection the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York, in 1999, this painting was offered alongside two other works by Giuseppe Carlo Ratti of the same dimensions, Christ and Peter on the Water and The Angel Liberating Peter (Sotheby’s, New York, 14 October 1999, lots 122 and 124). The three canvases relate to compositions from Ratti’s monumental cycle of Scenes from the Life of Saint Peter, commissioned for the Oratory of Saints Peter and Catherine and completed in 1782. In her 1983 monograph, Rosalina Collu notes the existence of several smaller replicas and bozzetti for the finished Oratory canvases which measure 153 ½ x 93 ¾ in.; 390 x 238 cm. (R. Collu, Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, Genoa, 1983, pp. 64-65).

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