This painting, powerfully expressive and of exceptional formal invention, depicts Saint Peter in the moment in which—his eyes red with tears and his hands clasped in prayer—he acknowledges his denial of Christ. Spanish by birth, Ribera moved to Italy when he was a young man and is documented in Rome from 1606. He immediately became one of the most important and influential followers of Caravaggio’s style. Ribera’s art was fundamental in the development of painting in Europe in the seventeenth century. This is one of his first paintings, first mentioned in 1644 in the collection of Cardinal Benedetto Monaldi Baldeschi in Rome.