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Caravaggio’s ‘Story of St Matthew’: A Challenge to the Conventions of Painting
Author(s) -
Puttfarken Thomas
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00101
Subject(s) - saint , painting , art , meaning (existential) , subject matter , depiction , realism , legend , decorum , convention , chapel , literature , art history , subject (documents) , fresco , philosophy , law , epistemology , library science , political science , computer science , curriculum
It is a convention of European painting that we expect a picture to be a clear visual display of meaning for the benefit of the viewer. Yet this convention is not absolute: artists can deviate from it, even undermine it. Caravaggio’s paintings in the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi de’ Francesi in Rome have generally been regarded as relatively clear in terms of their overall composition. The questions they have given rise to were concerned instead with the nature of Caravaggio’s realism, his use of light and shade, or his frequent breaches of decorum. However, the traditional ‘readings ’ of the Calling of St Matthew and his depiction of the saint’s Martyrdom are contradicted by two important kinds of evidence: the well‐established significance of both events in Christian hagiography; and a number of details in the paintings which, while not immediately obvious, are nevertheless clear. The traditional readings of the works could only be maintained if one was to argue that (a) Caravaggio had no understanding of the religious significance of the subject matter he had been asked to paint, and (b) he did not care whether the details he chose to include in his compositions had any bearing upon their meaning. It is argued here that the saint himself in the Calling , and the assassin in the Martyrdom , have, in the past, been misidentified. A detailed examination of both works, in the light of the major written sources of the saint’s life (which were easily available both in The Golden Legend and in the Roman Breviary ), leads to results which contradict their first, overall effect on the viewer. Why should Caravaggio have adopted such an unusual way of ordering his pictures? The answer is probably twofold: in general, Caravaggio dismissed the orderliness of art, its easy and ostentatious display of subject matter, in favour of a more ‘realistic ’ sense of confusion which needs to be sorted out by the viewer. And more specifically, Caravaggio insisted on the fundamental difference of revelatory divinity: for those to whom it is not revealed it remains obscure and enigmatic, until we work ourselves out of the dark and misleading reality of the first glance to a higher truth.