About this work
The eye lands first on flesh and violence: bodies pitching forward and recoiling, limbs splayed, and at the epicentre a near-nude executioner looming over a fallen old man in clerical dress.
The saint lies sprawled on the altar steps, recoiling as an angel descends to offer him the palm of martyrdom amid a chaotic throng of semi-nude converts and onlookers frozen in various states of shock and flight. The composition resolves, on closer attention, into a tightly controlled geometry: Caravaggio organises the chaos with a series of diagonals that cross at Matthew's body — the executioner's stride forming the dominant vector, Matthew's collapsing form opposing it, and the angel's dive from the cloud adding a third diagonal that stitches heaven to earth.
Matthew is not quailing in fear; he reaches for the angel's gift. The executioner's grasp and the angel's reach are two parallel paths.
A directed beam of light isolates Saint Matthew's agonised face and the fresh wound in his chest, sharply delineating these focal points against encroaching shadows. Tucked into the background, the most distant figure is a self-portrait of Caravaggio himself — as if participating in the tragedy and making it contemporary — looking out at the martyrdom to involve the spectator in it.
Painted between 1599 and 1600, the work hangs in the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, opposite *The Calling of Saint Matthew* and beside the altarpiece *The Inspiration of Saint Matthew*.
The commission caused Caravaggio considerable difficulty, as he had never painted so large a canvas, nor one with so many figures.
X-rays reveal two separate attempts at the composition before the version we see today, with a general movement towards simplification through reduction in the number of figures and the elimination of architecture.
The final version dropped the architecture, reduced the number of actors, moved the action closer to the viewer, and introduced the dramatic chiaroscuro that picks out the most important elements — in much the same way a spotlight picks out action on a stage.
This painting marks the moment when Mannerist orthodoxy gave way to the Baroque. It caused a sensation: Federico Zuccari, one of the most eminent painters in Rome and a champion of Mannerism, came to see and sniffed that it was nothing — but the younger artists were totally won over, and Caravaggio became suddenly the most famous artist in Rome.
As wall art, this print commands a room with strong architectural bones — a hall
