St Peter

St Peter is shown dressed in full papal regalia, as the first Bishop of Rome, and holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven in his left hand. This sculpture was probably originally displayed on a console set on one of the pillars of the nave of a church. Such figures, both in wood and stone, were especially popular in the early 16th century in France and the Netherlands, and a comparable St Peter in limestone, probably from the parish church of Saint-Pierre in Pommard, Burgundy (now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut), illustrates how widespread this particular image of the saint became.

The style of this example suggests it comes from the South Netherlands (now Belgium), and its close similarity to an oak figure of Solomon in the Vleeshuis in Antwerp sems to confirm this theory.