The Calling of St Matthew
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
A hand comes out of the dark and points — and it is Adam's hand from the Sistine ceiling, reversed. Irving Lavin's reading: Christ as the New Adam, issuing the call and taking the payment in one gesture.
The light enters from the upper right, above his head, from a source Caravaggio refuses to show. The window he does paint, on the wall above the table, lets in nothing.
Four hundred years on, art historians still cannot agree which man at that table is Matthew. At least one argues Caravaggio meant it that way.
Sources: Irving Lavin, "Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew: The Identity of the Protagonist," in Past-Present (UC Press, 1993), 84-99 · Andreas Prater, Pantheon (1985); Jürgen Müller, Kunstgeschichte OPRJ (2021), DOI 10.5283/kuge.577 · the beam from an unseen source above Christ’s head; contemporary dress against timeless robes · citing Gozzano & Tosini, La cappella Contarelli in San Luigi dei Francesi
And when Jesus passed on from thence, he saw a man sitting in the custom house, named Matthew; and he saith to him: Follow me. And he arose up and followed him.
Matthew 9:9 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 10,039 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.