When Pope Sixtus IV built the Sistine Chapel, he asked a group of artists to decorate its interior. One of them, Pietro Perugino, painted a cycle of frescoes on one of the walls, which included a work entitled, “Christ Handing the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter.” Many considered this the most famous painting in the Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo appeared on the scene.
In this fresco, Perugino depicts an incident in Caesarea Philippi, which the three evangelists – Matthew, Mark and Luke – write about, on which occasion Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples replied, “John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets.” And then he asked them directly, “But who do you say that I am?” To which Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.”
Matthew, however, adds that, when he heard Peter’s answer, Jesus told him, “Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
The Roman Catholic Church take these words “upon this rock I will build my rock” to mean that Christ founded his Church on Peter and his successors, the Bishops of Rome.
In this sense, Perugino’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel has great significance since it conveys the doctrine of apostolic succession by which Christ handed power to Peter and thence his successors. Incidentally, the credulous believe that during the conclave the cardinal selected by lot to stay in the cell beneath the fresco would become pope.
Perugino relocates this incident in Jesus’ life to his own High Renaissance world. He sets it in a spacious piazza, with the background of two Roman triumphal arches flanking a porticoed temple, the Temple of Solomon. In the foreground, we see Jesus giving the keys to Peter, while the apostles watch, in two groups, one on the left, the other on the right. In the middle ground Perugino portrays two scenes from the Gospels – on the left, Jesus speaking about the tribute coin, and on the right, a crowd about to stone Jesus.
In this fresco, Perugino shows us how to make a flat two-dimensional surface appear three-dimensional through the use of lines.
I consider of prior significance to the giving of the keys to Peter the question that Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” In the fresco Peter kneels while receiving the keys; clearly Perugino wants to draw out the import of Peter’s reply to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” by showing him in an act of adoration.
Which makes me think that if I believe in Christ, I need daily to hear him ask me the question, “But who do you say that I am?” And to give him a definite answer.
Will I give a voguish statement, such as, “You’re one of history’s greatest men and moral teachers, in the league of such as the Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad or Socrates.” And nothing will happen unless, like Peter, and with conviction, I declare that Jesus is God. Then his love would upset my life.
In this regard, perhaps I should take my cue from C.S. Lewis, who wrote:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
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