Saint Peter

Saint Peter is a Apuan marble sculpture of Saint Peter of 2.43 m high. It is attributed to Filippo Brunelleschi and his style is influenced by Donatello. It forms part of a cycle of fourteen statues of the patron saints of the guilds of Florence for the external niches of Orsanmichele. The sculpture of St Peter was completed for the Arte dei Beccai (butchers) guild around 1412 and is now in the Museo di Orsanmichele, although a replica fills its original niche. History and attribution Saint Peter of Orsanmichele is one of the more-discussed statues of the complex, although the documentation for its provenance and dating are lost. The traditional attribution was to Donatello, as reported by Giorgio Vasari in his Le Vite, where he wrote that the work as commissioned from Brunelleschi and Donatello but that only the second performed the work and brought it "to perfection." This attribution was placed in doubt by comparisons to the statues of Nanni di Banco, Michelozzo, and Bernardo Ciuffagni, which suggest a dating to the third decade of the 1400s. Contemporary critics are convinced by a Brunelleschi attribution for Saint Peter for the high quality of the work. Attributions to Ciuffagni don't make much sense, as he was a Gothic and Ghibertian sculptor even up to 1424–1427, when he executed sculptures of the prophet Isaiah and David, which don't compare to Saint Peter of Orsanmichele. Brunelleschi, after his defeat in the competition for the second door of the Florence Baptistery in 1401, went to Rome to study classical statuary. One indication that the perspective inlays were by Brunelleschi is that they are found in the tabernacle, which is not late Gothic but modeled after tabernacles of the mid-1400s. The inlays suggest an early phase of Brunelleschi's, leading up to the Renaissance. Saint Peter is dressed classically, like an ancient Roman statue, easily visible in Rome. His lean and tendinous wrists suggest the panel of the Sacrifice of Isaac, which is a Gothic relief. If you compare the head of Saint Peter with the following figures of the silver altar of Saint Jacob at Pistoia, you can note an affinity in the prominence of his eyes, in the wrinkles on his forehead, and his nose.