Giovanni Battista Pittoni (1687–1767), The Consignment of the Keys to Peter

As part of “Insights into the Depository,” visitors to the Archbishop’s Chateau Kroměříž can see an artwork generously donated to the Olomouc Museum of Art last year by Helena Neumannová, daughter of the prominent Czech art historian Jaromír Neumann (1924–2001), in whose collection the painting was previously held. The almost three-hundred-year-old painting is now in excellent condition thanks to the work of museum restorer Anna Pišťková in 2025–2026.

“The Consignment of the Keys to Peter,” also known as “Christ’s Commissioning of Peter,” was created around 1735 by the Italian painter Giovanni Battista Pittoni (1687–1767), one of the main representatives of Venetian Rococo. He received recognition during his lifetime not only in Veneto but also in Central Europe, where he was a highly sought-after artist. He also participated in the founding of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he served as president for many years and taught as a professor until his death.

A quote from the Gospel of St. Matthew (16:18–20), which forms the subject of the painting. Christ's metaphorical speech was considered a prototype of the sacrament of priestly ordination.

The work depicts Christ elevating St. Peter to be the first of the apostles. Christ stands on a staircase in the center of the composition, leaning towards Peter, who kneels to receive the symbolic keys with which he is to lead the church. On the ground lie the tools for fulfilling this mission – an open book and a sword – while in the distance, angels appear among the clouds. On the left, St. James is depicted with a pilgrim’s staff. St. John, with a gesture of his right hand, emphasizes the spiritual significance of the handing over of the keys to the heavenly paradise. The focused expressions on the faces attest to the inner emotion of the other apostles observing the scene.

Louvre, Tours, Oxford, and Olomouc

The exhibited painting belongs to a group of compositionally and qualitatively almost identical works of similar dimensions, which have been preserved, for example, in the collections of the Louvre in Paris, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. These mentioned examples, along with the painting from the Olomouc Museum of Art, are works created in Pittoni’s studio under the master’s supervision. The painting from the Louvre is considered the first sketch (bozzetto) for an altarpiece, about whose final realization there are no reports, and it is possible that it was never created, but given the excellent quality of the other authorial variants, this may not be true.

Restoration of the painting revealed an original, later overpainted arch in the upper part of the composition, which indicated the type of framing for the final work. This discovery only confirmed the authenticity of the Olomouc example, which is fully comparable in its artistic quality to analogous variants from the aforementioned collections.

The painting is a typical work by Pittoni, in which he richly fulfilled the Rococo form of Venetian painting from the first half of the 18th century. Color fields, almost without chiaroscuro transitions, divide the space through draperies which – it seems – served to more clearly distinguish individual figures. The fresh and swiftly executed painting represents an apparent oil sketch, a so-called pseudosketches, which were very popular at the time and enjoyed great interest from collectors. This also explains the higher frequency of almost identical examples scattered in various collections.

Jaromír Neumann previously pointed out the influence of this Pittoni composition in German-speaking countries, which may have been mediated there by Paul Troger (1698–1762) or Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724–1796). Examples of this ideological transfer, according to Neumann, are found in the large fresco by Jan Lukáš Kracker in the monastic church in Nová Říše na Moravě, dated 1765–1767, which was influenced by Maulbertsch, and in the frescoes by Jan Václav Spitzer, Jan Jiří Franck, and Josef Jáchym Redelmeyer in Bohemia. Another example of the interpretation of Pittoni's The Consignment of the Keys to Peter is found in Maulbertsch’s early work held in the Slezské zemské muzeum in Opava.

In the Arcidiecézní muzeum in Olomouc, there is probably a later copy of this iconic work, which Archbishop Leopold Prečan purchased in 1937 from the Brno antique dealer Vladimír Seidl. Although this painting does not achieve the painterly qualities of Pittoni's Olomouc variant, it offers a remarkable insight into the reception of the original by contemporary copyists or followers.

The mini-exhibition in the climate-controlled frame of the Picture Gallery of Kroměříž Castle offers a comparison between the original painting by Giovanni Battista Pittoni, "The Consignment of the Keys to Peter" from the first half of the 18th century, and its contemporary copy (left). Photo: MUO – Tereza Hrubá