Guardroom with the Deliverance of Saint Peter

David Teniers the Younger Flemish

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 637

Flemish painters had a long tradition of relegating religious narratives to the background of scenes drawn from contemporary life. Here, the viewer can just glimpse Saint Peter’s liberation from captivity by an angel, while in the foreground, soldiers play dice and a heap of armor and earthenware conveys Teniers’s skillful illusionism. In this way, the painting enacts the worldly distractions that can cause believers to lose sight of higher things.

This painting was seized by the Nazis from Baron Karl Neuman (Charles Neuman de Végvár) in Paris and restituted to him by 1947.

Guardroom with the Deliverance of Saint Peter, David Teniers the Younger (Flemish, Antwerp 1610–1690 Brussels), Oil on wood

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