The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio

The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio

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A room in Rome, not Galilee: men in the fashion of 1600 counting money at a table. Christ has come in at the right with Peter, and points. The light comes in with him, over his shoulder, and falls on the men at the table — one still counting, one squinting, one pointing at himself or at the man beside him, as if to say who, me? Scholars still argue about which of them is Matthew. Caravaggio may have wanted it that way: the call lands in a room, and the question is who will get up.

The hand Christ points with is copied from Adam's on the Sistine ceiling — the second creation.

The Contarelli Chapel

Painted for the chapel of Cardinal Matthieu Cointrel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, where it still hangs opposite the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. It was Caravaggio's first public commission and it made him famous in a season. The picture is very large — over three metres square — and the photograph here is of the whole canvas.

About this print

Made from a high-resolution scan of the painting, 10,039 pixels tall, in the canvas's near-square format.

Sources: San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, Contarelli Chapel · Wikidata Q969377 · Wikimedia Commons