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From about the middle of the eighteenth century it became customary to embellish pulpits with more and more sculptural work. This included relief compositions as well in which the subject was the preaching of the Gospel. This gilded wooden relief of St. Peter preaching, together with its counterpart known as St. Paul's Sermon in Athens, were two such reliefs which at one time decorated the front of a pulpit. Their place of origin is not known. They show some relationship to similar works by Lajos Gode, one of Donner's most prolific pupils, in particular to the reliefs in the Jesuit church in Pozsony which, in spite of rococo enrichments, follow in essentials Donner's classical style.
The figures of apostles created by Gode may have served as models for the long-faced standing or recumbent provincial men and women in this relief. The way in which the artist tries to suggest space is, however, much more primitive than in Lajos Gode's works. Against a background closed by a window and a curtain, the figures are arranged in two planes in a relatively small space indicated by the illusory perspective produced by the flagstones and platform. St. Peter, a key hanging from his waist, arms outstretched as he preaches, is the central figure of the composition; the figures forming the congregation, worked as if they had been applied separately, fall into two groups. The rather simple technique of embossing, with ample use of curtains, clouds and steps to suggest space, is familiar from the works of sculptors active in the mining towns of Upper Hungary. The same means had been employed for example by Martin Vogerl for the execution of the reliefs on the base of the Immaculata monument in Nyitra, and also for the series of reliefs on the column of the Holy Trinity which he created jointly with Stanetti in Körmöcbánya. Many of Stanetti's sculptures in the round are directly analogous with the figures in the relief and since there is evidence that he undertook also the decoration of a pulpit in the Great Church in Körmöcbánya, it is possible that the two carvings found their way to the museum from there.
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