The Two Columns of the Church  

The San Zeno Altarpiece is a monumental triptych painted by Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431–1506) between 1457 and 1460 for the high altar of the Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore in Verona. The work consists of a central panel showing the Virgin and Child in majesty, surrounded by angel musicians, and two side panels: on the left, the apostolic pillars (Peter, Paul, John, and Zeno, a 4th-century bishop and saint, apostle of Christian Verona); on the right, the city’s patron saints (Benedict, Lawrence, Gregory the Great, and John the Baptist). The painted architecture that structures the composition is inspired by antiquity; it unifies the panels into a single coherent space, like a loggia opening onto a garden.

The illustration on the cover of this month’s Magnificat is a detail from the left panel. It depicts Saints Peter and Paul. The silent dialogue between the two, as Mantegna presents it, is a distillation of his genius: sculptural rigor, psychological depth, and a keen sense of monumentality. Saint Peter looks out of the painting at a figure who is clearly speaking to him. This could very well be Jesus himself, whom he encounters on the Appian Way just outside Rome, as he flees persecution in the year 64. Peter has just called out to him, “Quo vadis, Domine?” and Jesus replies, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” (1)

Peter commands respect. The Church has been built upon him; he is the supreme shepherd. Yet his expression reveals his awareness of his weaknesses: he is solid as a rock because he has been lifted up and transformed by mercy. The heavy keys he holds in his right hand are not displayed as a sign of power, but carried as a burden of responsibility and service.

Paul holds his sword like the two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to [God’s] eyes (Heb 4:12-13a). And indeed, the chief of the apostles seems to be under the gaze of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. It is a look full of deference and even submission, yet also one of benevolent compassion, as if Mantegna wished to suggest in Paul’s eyes a tender recollection of what he said to the Galatians: And when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong (Gal 2:11).

By staging this silent dialogue between the two pillars of the Church—a dialogue where, despite the absence of sound, their postures, gestures, and expressions speak for themselves—Mantegna highlights their complementarity and seeks to convey the internal dynamics of the early Church. In essence, Mantegna does not oppose them; he unites them, for the tension he suggests between them is profoundly fruitful. Without Paul, the Church would have risked becoming rigid and petrified; without Peter, the Church would have risked dispersing and fragmenting.

These two pillars of the Church present a stony visage. Their faces, angular and tense, seem carved in stone. The drapery looks as if it were chiseled with a gradine. The light, harsh and frontal, accentuates the figures and gives the scene an almost architectural density. Mantegna treats the apostles like living statues, as if they had escaped from the Roman statuary he so passionately admired. This approach is not merely stylistic: it situates the apostles within the continuity of the antiquity in which they lived, as if Christian truth, in some measure, came to fulfill ancient wisdom. That ancient wisdom, moreover, was praised by Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 265–339) with the beautiful title Praeparatio Evangelica (“Preparation for the Gospel”).

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1 The Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz based his novel Quo Vadis, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905, on this episode recounted in the Acts of Peter (traditionally dated to late antiquity). The film adaptation directed in 1951 by Mervyn LeRoy is a masterpiece that was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

Pierre-Marie Dumont

Saints Peter and Paul (1457–1459), detail of the left side of the altarpiece of San Zeno, Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431–1506), Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore, Verona, Italy. © akg / FAF Toscana – Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia.

^{The altarpiece of San Zeno, Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431–1506), Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore, Verona, Italy.}