Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1884 — Rubens’ Simon Peter on the Cross. [ARTICLE]

Rubens’ Simon Peter on the Cross.

I was in Cologne some years ago—had been wandering all day about the city—and was quite tired and very cross; for it seemed as if the whole city had made up its mind to pick my pocket. I was going to my lodgings when my guide said, “There is a picture I want you to still see.” “Anything to pay ?” I asked, grimly. “Ye*s,” he answered, so much. “Then,” I said, “I will not go. I am sick of the whole business, and tired out. I will go home.” But the man had his way, after all, and I went to see the picture painted by Rubens for his own parish church. It was an altar piece, and they were ready to show it after I paid my money. No man in this world could be more unfit than I was to see that picture. They turned it to the light, and I stood half a minute, I suppose, in the silence with the setting sun shining on it, and then I was sobbing and striving to choke back my tears. It is a terrible picture, as some of you will remember —the death of this Simon Peter on the cross, with' his head downward. The master never made grander work than in that picture. The pain of it smites you with a solid stroke, but the secret of its greatness is in the eyes; and these are wonderful gray eyes—the eyes of the prophet, in which the painter has hidden such deeps of glory and victory that, as I stood there amazed through the power and beauty of it, I seemed to hear the angels singing. The man was looking from the cross right into the heart of heaven. The light was more than the shining of the sun; it was the light which kindles suns—it was the light of God. He knew nothing of the pain, death had no dominion, he had fought the good fight. The curtuns of time were falling, the eternal life sustaining the fainting and falling spirit, and Simon Peter was alreadv absent from the body and present with the Lord.— Rev. Robert Collyer.