Christ Giving the Keys to Paradise to St. Peter

Giambattista Pittoni's Christ Giving the Keys to Paradise to St. Peter, painted around 1730 and held in the Louvre, depicts the founding moment of the Catholic Church as recorded in Matthew 16 — when Christ declares Peter to be the rock on which he will build his church and grants him the keys of the kingdom of heaven. The subject held profound theological significance throughout the Counter-Reformation and continued to assert papal authority in the eighteenth century. Pittoni's version displays his characteristic synthesis of Venetian coloristic richness with the elegantly linear quality that distinguishes Rococo religious painting from the heavier seventeenth-century Baroque.

The composition places Christ standing above the kneeling Peter, the transfer of keys the compositional and theological focus. Light emanates from the divine figure and falls on Peter's humbled form. The surrounding apostles provide a frieze of varied expressions and poses rendered in Pittoni's fluid, graceful manner.