The passage of the keys to Peter

The Passage of the Keys to Peter, in the Belvedere and undated, depicts Christ's charge to Saint Peter from Matthew 16:18-19, when Jesus declares Peter the rock on which he will build his church and gives him the keys of the kingdom of heaven. This subject had profound ecclesiological significance for the Catholic Church, as it provided the scriptural foundation for papal authority and Petrine succession. As an undated work, it cannot be precisely placed in Pittoni's development, but stylistically it belongs to his mature period when his confident handling of large figural compositions in landscape or architectural settings was fully established. The Belvedere's collection, primarily associated with Austrian Baroque and later nineteenth-century art, includes earlier Italian works that came through Habsburg collecting networks, and this subject—with its direct relevance to Catholic institutional authority—would have been of particular importance in the Habsburg Catholic cultural context. The formal ceremony of the key presentation gave Pittoni a compositional structure of two principals—Christ and Peter—attended by the gathered apostles, a configuration he could organize with practiced fluency.

The composition places Christ and Peter in a frontal relationship that mirrors the sacramental exchange being depicted—the divine authority passed through a visible, tangible object. Pittoni manages the apostle group as a framing chorus around this central transaction, distributing figures in poses of witness, reverence, and attention. The landscape or architectural background establishes a sacred outdoor setting that the Gospel narrative implies.