Focus on this artwork and discuss the Origins and provenance.
Ter Brugghen's Denial has strong similarities in style to his The Liberation of Peter at the Staatliche Museum, Schwerin. Here the sparseness of the composition has done away altogether with the tradition of having two sleeping guards present. The picture is signed and dated 1629, the year Ter Brugghen died, giving us an indication that Denial might also have been painted around this time.The Art Institute of Chicago next finds the present painting in the collection of Reedtz-Thott, Guanø Castle near Næstved, Denmark, by about 1750. It was owned by Baron Kjeld Thor Tage Otto Reedtz-Thott (1839-1923), 2nd Baron Guanø by at least 1914, from whom it descended to Baron Axel Reedtz-Thott. He sold it to a London dealer in the late 1960s. By 1968, it was with Wildenstein & Company, New York and was purchased by the Chicago Institute in February 1969 from the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection.
Art Institute of Chicago Staatliche Museum, Schwerin x Denmark Wildenstein & Company 75 New York Baron Kjeld Thor Tage Otto Reedtz-Thott Næstved Chicago