Piotra i Pawła na Antokolu) is a Roman Catholic church located in the Antakalnis neighbourhood of Vilnius, Lithuania.

It was funded by Michał Kazimierz Pac, commemorating a victory over the Muscovites and their expulsion from Vilnius after six years of occupation.

[6] That inspired a legend that the first wooden church was founded by Petras Goštautas, a legendary ancestor of the Goštautai family, well before the official conversion of Lithuania to Christianity by Jogaila in 1387.

[6] Bishop of Samogitia Jerzy Tyszkiewicz gifted a painting of Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy (Lithuanian: Švč.

The construction of the new church was commissioned by the Great Lithuanian Hetman and Voivode of Vilnius Michał Kazimierz Pac.

It is said that Pac was inspired to rebuild the church after a 1662 incident when he hid in its ruins and thus narrowly escaped death from mutinous soldiers who later killed Wincenty Korwin Gosiewski, Field Hetman of Lithuania, and Kazimierz Żeromski.

[9] Before this project, Pac, having made only a couple relatively minor donations to Bernardines in Vilnius and Jesuits in Druskininkai, was not known as a patron of the church or the arts.

[11] The construction works started on 29 June 1668 (the day of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul) under the supervision of Jan Zaor from Kraków and finished in 1676 by Giovanni Battista Frediani.

According to his last wishes, Pac was buried beneath the doorstep of the main entrance with the Latin inscription Hic Jacet Pecator (here lies a sinner) on his tombstone.

At the end of the 18th century, lightning hit the church, knocked down a sculpture which fell and fractured the tombstone; the incident inspired many rumors about Pac and his sins.

In 1864, as reprisal for the failed January Uprising, Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky closed the monastery and converted its buildings into military barracks.

[14] When in 1956 Vilnius Cathedral was converted into an art museum by Soviet authorities, the silver sarcophagus with sacred relics of Saint Casimir was moved to the St. Peter and St. Paul's Church.

[6] The church is a 17th-century basilica with a traditional cross floor plan and a dome with a lantern allowing extra light into its white interior.

[11] It is divided by a prominent balcony, freestanding columns (used for the first time in Lithuanian ecclesiastical architecture),[13] windows, and cornices.

No documents survive to explain the ideas behind the decorations, therefore various art historians attempted to find one central theme: Pac's life and Polish–Lithuanian relations, teachings of Saint Augustine, Baroque theater, etc.

There are many decorative elements – floral (acanthus, sunflowers, rues, fruits), various objects (military weapons, household tools, liturgical implements, shells, ribbons), figures (puttos, angels, soldiers), fantastical creatures (demons, dragons, centaurs), Pac's coat of arms, masks making various expressions – but they are individualized, rarely repeating.

From the central nave, the entrance to each of the four chapels has two allegorical female figures, representing eight Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount and created according to the iconography of Cesare Ripa.

[7] The western (left) transept displays the painting of Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy and two large Turkish war drums (timpano, 140 cm (55 in) in circumference)[32] that were seized from the Ottomans in the Battle of Khotyn of 11 November 1673 and granted to the church by its founder Michał Kazimierz Pac.

It is decorated with gilded details, including reliefs of eagle, bull, lion, and angel which symbolize the Four Evangelists.

The lower lever had a painting of Saint Paul surrounded by sculptures depicting twelve pagan nations representing the world or the converted people.

[31] The apse has four sculptures that stand inside wall niches, including Saint Jacob, John the Baptist, and resurrected Christ.

This scene emphasizes that Peter and subsequent popes derived their power directly from God and is a strong Counter-Reformation statement.

The sculpture is life-sized (185 cm (73 in)), made of hardwood, dressed in clothes of white silk and purple velvet, and has a wig of natural black hair.

[38] A copy of a statue displayed in the Basilica of Jesus de Medinaceli in Madrid, it is the most prominent example of Spanish Baroque in Lithuania.

[35] It depicts the scene of Ecce homo: flogged Christ with a crown of thorns facing an angry mob.

[4] This composition seems inverted since the Evangelists are below the Doctors, but that could be a purposeful statement to emphasize importance of the Church after the Council of Trent.

[30] A boat-shaped chandelier made of brass and glass beads hangs from the middle of the dome and reminds that Saint Peter was a fisherman.

[39] The three smaller frescoes above the organ form a triptych from Saint Peter's life: healing a cripple, escape from prison, and vision of a sheet with animals.

[31][40] These frescoes are of a rather simple composition,[41] poorly executed, and lack background detail,[42] but the figures are expressive, making complex, dynamic, almost theatrical movements.

[43] Mindaugas Paknys, using surviving written records, disproved both hypotheses and attributed the frescoes to Johann Gotthard Berchhoff.