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The Radical Way Caravaggio Painted the Divine
A bold and irresistible work by a Baroque master
Take a moment to look at this intense painting.
I’ve had a copy of this image on my wall for at least a decade and it still grabs my attention. There’s something unresolved about it — a sense of constant unfolding, you might say. As such, it never ceases to draw from me new questions, new considerations, sometimes even new hopes for myself.
It shows a mature man, draped in the most gloriously painted tangerine robe, working at a wooden table. He holds a quill and ink pot in his hands, as he looms over the pages of an open book.
His study has been interrupted by a young boy who appears to be descending from above. Their eyes are locked in an intense dialogue.
Look at the boy more closely. One question that comes to mind — a question that the artist Caravaggio sought to make more enticing, more beckoning — is how exactly he hangs there?
The way the light falls on his arms and shoulders makes his upper torso easy to see. The rest of his body, as it disappears into those swirling folds of white fabric, is less straightforward to determine. He is part human and part something else. It is only after looking very intently that you realise he is an angel and has two substantial wings flapping from his back.
It is just one of the brilliant aspects of The Inspiration of Saint Matthew: how it moves so boldly between tangible realism and extraordinary artifice.
It presents a key aspect of Caravaggio’s originality as a painter, his ability to forge concrete links with the spiritual realm by the use of mortal faces and naturalistic expressions.
Matthew’s inspiration
Look at the angel again. By the gesture of his hands, he appears to be explaining something. If you are familiar with the subject, you’ll know that the man depicted is the evangelist St Matthew, the author of the first Gospel of the New Testament. And the angel is his inspiration. In literal terms, the angel is…
