The Penitence of Saint Peter,

1621

These two images of saints were made by Catholic artists—Ribera working in the Catholic Kingdom of Naples and Bloemaert in the Protestant-controlled Netherlands. Ribera is best known for his depictions of saints in ecstatic divine revelation or in the agony of martyrdom, Counter-Reformation tactics that targeted viewers’ emotions to inspire religious devotion. However, similar subjects by Protestants (such as Dou and Rembrandt in the case above) show that images of saints could appeal to audiences across religious and political boundaries. Although the otherworldly halo crowning Bloemaert’s Saint Jerome gives the drawing a Catholic flavor, the subject of Jerome writing—likely translating the Hebrew Bible into Latin—would have interested a Protestant public that valued the authority of scripture over that of the church.