The artist, a young man from Milan by the name of Caravaggio, had been commissioned to paint a crucifixion: not of Christ himself, but of his leading disciple. Peter, a fisherman who, according to the gospels, had abandoned his boat and nets to follow Jesus, was said to have become the ‘overseer’ – the episcopos or ‘bishop’ – of the first Christians of Rome, before being put to death by Nero.
