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The Calling of Saint Matthew

Artist: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610)
Date: 1599–1600
Dimensions: 322 x 340 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, Italy

The Calling of Saint Matthew, painted for a chapel in the French church in Rome, shows Christ entering a dim room where the tax collector Matthew sits counting money with his companions, and calling him to become a disciple.

A closer look

Christ, almost hidden behind Saint Peter, stretches out his hand in a gesture borrowed from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. A beam of light falls diagonally across the wall from the same direction, as if carrying his call into the room. The men around the table wear the fashionable clothes of Caravaggio’s own day, which made the sacred story feel startlingly immediate. Scholars still debate whether Matthew is the bearded man pointing at himself or the young man bent over the coins.

History of the painting

The painting was commissioned for the Contarelli Chapel in the French national church in Rome, San Luigi dei Francesi, under the will of the French cardinal Matthieu Cointerel, and it has never left the place for which it was made. It hangs on the left wall of the chapel, opposite The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, with Saint Matthew and the Angel above the altar, so visitors can still see the three canvases together as Caravaggio planned. The chapel is dim, and coin-operated lights allow visitors to illuminate the paintings for a few minutes at a time.

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