The Denial of Peter by Gerard Seghers

NETHERLANDISH Caravaggesqucs had a habit of appro-priating certain subjects where they felt their talents could be most profitably displayed. Jan Janssens staked a claim to the Mocking of Christ, Honthorst to feasting scenes, Gerard Scghcrs to the Denial of St Peter, though of course there was also a lively interchange. In Seghers's case the religious theme had the advantage of easy adaptability to genre treatment. Seghers hankered after the depiction of ordinary men and women of flesh and blood - he had not spent several years in Manfredian circles in Rome to no avail -but also liked to show them in a moment of crisis in their lives when they had done some awful thing, and fear and qualms of conscience flickered over their faces. This is where the masked candle camc in so handy. So he got the best of both worlds, the physical and the spiritual. It has always been recognized that the night scene of the Denial was his special province. But owing to the fact that a number of pictures by or after him have been wrongly attributed, nobody has realized quite how often he attacked this theme. It is the purpose of this article to explore these pictures, to publish some originals, and to group together others which only survive in copies.