Martyrdom of St. Matthew

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Martyrdom of St. Matthew (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio)
Martyrdom of St. Matthew
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio , 1599/1600
Oil on canvas
323 × 343 cm
San Luigi dei Francesi , Rome

The Martyrdom of St. Matthew is a painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio . It was created in 1599 in the early Baroque style as a commissioned church work and is still in the Contarelli chapel of the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome , for which it was created. It shows how the Evangelist Matthew the martyrdom suffered and is killed in a church.

Emergence

Through the mediation of either his patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon Del Monte , or his friend Giovan Battista Marino, at the end of July 1599 Caravaggio received the order from the rectors of the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi to produce three large-format paintings for the funeral chapel of the French Cardinal Mathieu Cointrel ( 1519–1585, Italian Contarelli ). He had already planned its decoration in 1565. For 500 scudi, Caravaggio agreed to finish the three large-format paintings on the subject of St. Matthew by the end of the year, because the chapel should be ready by the holy year 1600. It was the 28-year-old painter's first commission for pictures that were to be shown publicly in a church. Until then, he had never had to work in such a large format, with so many characters and in such a short time.

The Martyrdom painted Caravaggio before the opposite wall Calling of Saint. Matthew . X-ray examinations show that he had painted over a first, clearly different picture on the subject. This leads to the conclusion that he worked without more precise sketches and designed his picture compositions directly on the canvas.

The painting in the Cappella Contarelli , in connection with the other two: left the vocation, in the middle the writing evangelist with the angel and right the martyrdom.

description

In the center of the painting you can see a man, clad only in a loincloth and a head bandage, who, sword in hand, bends over the saint lying on the ground with a face contorted with hate. He, recognizable as a priest by his robe , is already wounded in the chest. He raises his hand, which the half-naked murderer grabs to deal the fatal blow. From above, an angel on a cloud gives Matthew the martyr's palm . The angel's posture is so twisted that no model could have taken it. Below on the right an acolyte flees with his mouth open in shock. In the foreground, three men, also half-naked, are sitting at the edge of a pool - apparently catechumens waiting to be baptized . On the left edge of the picture, six soldiers in 16th century robes can be seen, including one who is putting his sword back into his pocket. Another raises his hand defensively and backs away, a bearded man with a regretful expression on his face is mistaken for a self-portrait by Caravaggio. The background shows an altar with a burning candle.

subject

The legend of the martyrdom of St. Matthew is told in the Acta Sanctorum . After that, the saint is said to have come to Ethiopia on his missionary trip, where he converted King Egippus and his daughter Iphigenia, who vowed celibacy. After the king's death, his successor Hirtacus wanted to marry Iphigenia. Matthew then preached against this plan at a mass celebration , whereupon Hirtacus is said to have sent soldiers into the church who killed the saint at the altar. Girolamo Muziano had painted this subject shortly before in a side chapel of the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli .

Representation

The picture is held in the tenebrism typical of Caravaggio . The bright focus is on the half-naked figure of the murderer, who, like the baptized persons, the white robes of the saint and the acolytes and some of the faces of the bystanders, shine out of the dark background in a strong contrast . Its details are hardly or not at all recognizable. The focus is on Matthew and his murderer, all other figures as well as the cloud on which the angel lies represent the frame. The sword of the murderer and the palm branch form a parallel - an indication of the eternal bliss that beckons the victim as a reward . The line that forms the sword touches that of the sword that one of the soldiers puts back in its sheath. The image composition is based on Titian's (now lost) painting from 1530, The Death of Petrus Martyr : Here, too, a companion flees with his mouth wide open, here too the murderer raises his sword over the victim who is already lying on the ground, here too angels hover over the scene.

interpretation

Caravaggio's self-portrait within the painting

The painting raises various questions. Are the soldiers on the left edge of the picture just horrified spectators, as the art historian Rosella Vodret thinks, or did they come to murder the saint, as Rudolf Preimesberger believes? The fact that Caravaggio positions his self-portrait in this group of all people and not in the group of the baptized is interpreted as an “ ironic self-accusation” of being a “ follower in the classical sense”.

It is also unclear why the sacrament , in the performance of which the saint is said to have been slain, was postponed from Holy Mass to Baptism, which did not play a role in the first version. The art historian Valeska v. Rosen suspects an influence of the rectors of the church here, because in fact, during the holy year, adult baptisms of Jews and Muslims took place in San Luigi dei Francesi. But why the murderer was counted among the baptized persons and not among the soldiers because of his incomplete clothing, cannot be explained by this. Where did the half-naked man get his sword from? Did he resist a forced baptism? The first blow that caused the saint to fall to the ground seems to have come from the soldier with a plume on his hat, who stands with a relaxed expression on the left edge of the picture. The fact that the half-naked is a baptized person who comes to the aid of the already fatally wounded saint, as was suspected, appears implausible due to his aggressive facial expressions and body language. This ambiguity in the painting's plot is all the more surprising given that narrative clarity, “perspicuitas”, was a high ideal of Renaissance painting , on whose representative Tizian Caravaggio leaned in the composition of the picture. Von Rosen therefore suspects that he deliberately violated this norm in this picture and that this procedure was made clear to the appropriately trained viewer.

reception

The Martyrdom of St. Matthew and the two other paintings in the Contarelli Chapel caused a sensation when they were unveiled and contributed to Caravaggio receiving numerous lucrative commissions until he fled Rome six years later. Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613–1696), however, criticized the painting; in particular the restrained gestures of the audience seemed to him to be “not appropriate” for the holy event of martyrdom.

literature

  • Luciano Berti : Caravaggio: le storie di San Matteo . Sadea / Sanson, Florence 1965
  • Jutta Held : Caravaggio: Politics and Martyrdom of the Body . Reimer, Berlin 1996 ISBN 3-496-01156-4
  • Rudolf Preimesberger : Caravaggio in the 'Matthäusmartyrium' of the Cappella Contarelli . In: Peter K. Klein and Regine Prange (eds.): Zeitenspiegelung. On the importance of traditions in art and art history. Festschrift for Konrad Hoffmann . Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1998, pp. 135-149 ISBN 978-3-496-01192-7 (not viewed).
  • Todd Olson: Pitiful Relics. Caravaggio's Martyrdom of St. Matthew . In: Representations 77, Issue 1 (2002), pp. 107-142.
  • Sara Magister: Caravaggio: il vero Matteo . Campisano, Rome 2018 ISBN 978-88-85795-07-5

Web links

Commons : Martyrdom of St. Matthew  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Todd Olson: Pitiful Relics. Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Matthew. In: Representations 77, Heft 1 (2002), pp. 107–142, here p. 125.
  2. ↑ Rosella Vodret: Caravaggio. The Complete Works . Silvana Editoriale, Milan 2010, p. 100.
  3. ^ Todd Olson: Pitiful Relics. Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Matthew. In: Representations 77, Heft 1 (2002), pp. 107–142, here pp. 107–112 with images of the original painting.
  4. ^ Genevieve Warwick: Introduction. Caravaggio in History . In: the same: Caravaggio. Realism, rebellion, reception . University of Delaware Press, Newark 2006, p. 17.
  5. ↑ Valeska von Rosen: Caravaggio and the limits of what can be represented. Ambiguity, irony and performativity in painting around 1600 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-006243-3 , p. 59. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  6. ↑ Rosella Vodret: Caravaggio. The Complete Works . Silvana Editoriale, Milan 2010, p. 100.
  7. ↑ Valeska von Rosen: Caravaggio and the limits of what can be represented. Ambiguity, irony and performativity in painting around 1600 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-006243-3 , p. 261. (accessed via De Gruyter Online)
  8. ↑ Illustration on artres.com, accessed on July 14, 2018.
  9. ↑ Valeska von Rosen: Caravaggio and the limits of what can be represented. Ambiguity, irony and performativity in painting around 1600 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-006243-3 , p. 261 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online); Print based on Titian's painting on europeana.eu, accessed July 14, 2018.
  10. ↑ Rosella Vodret: Caravaggio. The Complete Works . Silvana Editoriale, Milan 2010, p. 100.
  11. ↑ Rudolf Preimesberger: Caravaggio in, Matthäusmartyrium 'the Cappella Contarelli . In: Peter K. Klein and Regine Prange (eds.): Zeitenspiegelung. On the importance of traditions in art and art history. Festschrift for Konrad Hoffmann . Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin1998, p. 140, referenced by Valeska von Rosen: Caravaggio and the limits of what can be represented. Ambiguity, irony and performativity in painting around 1600 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-006243-3 , p. 268 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  12. ↑ Valeska von Rosen: Caravaggio and the limits of what can be represented. Ambiguity, irony and performativity in painting around 1600 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-006243-3 , pp. 263-268. (accessed via De Gruyter Online)
  13. ^ Catherine Puglisi: Caravaggio's Life and Lives over Four Centuries . In: Genevieve Warwick: Caravaggio. Realism, rebellion, reception . University of Delaware Press, Newark 2006, ISBN 978-0-87413-936-5 , p. 27.
  14. ↑ Valeska von Rosen: Caravaggio and the limits of what can be represented. Ambiguity, irony and performativity in painting around 1600 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-006243-3 , p. 263 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).