Dressed in gown and tunic, the bearded figure of St Peter tramples the devil beneath his feet. He holds in his right hand a church and his crossed keys; in his left is a book. The sculpture formed the corner post of the ground floor of a house at the corner of High Street and North Street, Exeter, supporting the jettied upper storeys.
Although external wooden sculpture was not uncommon in late medieval England, the Exeter figure is a rare - and very large - survival of religious street iconography. Since no local tradition of large wooden sculpture is known, the possibility arises that this is the work of an immigrant craftsperson. The Low Countries or Germany are perhaps the most obvious origins for such an individual, but a third possibility could be France, where broadly comparable figures stand on house facades, for example at Morlaix. Exeter city documents of the early sixteenth century record a sizeable immigrant community, including people from all these areas.
