The Calling of Saint Matthew: When God Enters a Dive
A Roman tavern. Five men counting money. And God shows up. Caravaggio revolutionizes religious painting.
By Artedusa
••12 min read
The Calling of Saint Matthew: When God Enters a Dive
A Roman tavern. Or perhaps a clandestine gambling house. Five men sitting around a table counting money. Gold coins shine. They're tax collectors, publicans, collaborators who racketeer the people for the Roman occupier. Scum. Society's dregs.
And God shows up.
, painted by Caravaggio in 1599-1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in Rome's Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, isn't a pious, proper painting. It's a frontal shock. A violent intrusion of the sacred into the profane. Jesus enters this dive, extends his finger, and tells Matthew the publican: "Follow me." And Matthew, this gangster who spent his life counting dirty money, stands up and follows him.
The Calling of Saint Matthew
Caravaggio paints this scene with brutal realism that scandalized his contemporaries. No golden halos. No conventional celestial light. Just a beam of harsh light slicing through darkness, like a police spotlight revealing a crime scene. And in this light, men with hard faces, 16th-century clothing (not biblical costumes), real money on a real table.
The sacred and sordid merge. The divine and criminal occupy the same space. That's Caravaggio's genius: he refuses separation between heaven and earth. He says God doesn't intervene in an idealized world of saints in togas. He intervenes here, now, in our dives, our backrooms, our rotten lives.
Rome, 1599: When a Thug Paints God
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio is twenty-eight when he receives the Contarelli Chapel commission. He's a violent genius, brawler, probably homosexual, constantly in court for assault. He hangs out in taverns, sleeps with prostitutes and young men, knife-fights in dark alleys.
In 1606, six years after The Calling, he kills a man in a brawl. Sentenced to death, he flees Rome. He'll spend his last four years on the run, painting desperate masterpieces before dying at thirty-eight on a beach, probably murdered.
But in 1599, he's still in Rome. He just obtained his first important public commission. Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, his protector, secured him the contract to decorate the Contarelli Chapel. Two large lateral paintings: The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. Plus a central altarpiece: Saint Matthew and the Angel.
Caravaggio revolutionizes religious painting. Until him, biblical scenes are idealized, sanitized, disembodied. Saints resemble mannequins in period costume floating in abstract space. Caravaggio says no. He paints real people. Faces he sees in the street. Massive, heavy, earthly bodies. Dirty hands. Filthy feet. Wrinkled clothes.
And above all, he invents a light treatment that will revolutionize Western art: tenebrism. Violent, almost tangible light surging from total darkness and striking bodies like a punch. No soft gradation. No harmonious transition. Just black and white, shadow and light, nothingness and being battling mercilessly.
The Finger: Who Is Called?
At the painting's center, the question. Jesus enters from the right, accompanied by Saint Peter. He extends his arm. His index finger points toward the table where men count money. But exactly toward whom is he pointing?
Look closely. Matthew (identified as the bearded man on the table's right) raises his hand toward his chest with total surprise. "Me? Are you talking to me?" His gesture recalls Mary's in Annunciations: "How is this possible?"
But Jesus's finger could also point toward the young man bent over the table, absorbed in counting coins. Or toward the two men at the left end who don't even look up, focused on their money.
Caravaggio maintains ambiguity. Divine calling isn't laser-targeted. It's a general interpellation. "You" could be any of them. Any of us.
And this gesture of the extended finger—Caravaggio copies it directly from Michelangelo. It's the same gesture as God in The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. God creating man by extending his finger. Here, Jesus re-creates Matthew by extending his finger. Vocation is a new creation. The old man dies. The new man is born.
But unlike Michelangelo, where God's and Adam's fingers almost touch in an idealized divine space, here, the space is sordid, real, earthly. The miracle doesn't need a celestial setting. It happens in grime and dirty money.
The Light: The Painting's Real Character
The main character of The Calling of Saint Matthew is neither Jesus nor Matthew. It's the light.
It arrives from the right, from the same side as Jesus. It crosses the painting diagonally, slices through darkness, strikes the seated men's faces. It's physical light, almost palpable. You could touch it. It doesn't emanate from Jesus himself—Caravaggio refuses conventional supernatural. It comes from an off-screen source, realistic. A window, perhaps. Or an open door.
But this "realistic" light has an obvious symbolic dimension. It's the light of grace. Light that reveals. That tears from darkness. That transforms.
Caravaggio is the absolute master of chiaroscuro. He pushes the technique to extremes nobody before him dared. In his paintings, darkness isn't a neutral background. It's an active, thick, menacing presence. Characters emerge from black like survivors coming out of water. Light doesn't illuminate them. It saves them.
This technique that will be called tenebrism (from Latin tenebrae, darkness) will influence all European Baroque painting. Rembrandt will take it up. Vermeer too, in his way. Ribera, Zurbarán, Georges de La Tour will make it their signature. But Caravaggio remains the original master. The one who understood that light is only defined by darkness. That to show grace, you must first show the nothingness from which it tears us.
The Costumes: God in 1599
Scandalous detail: the characters don't wear biblical costumes. They're dressed as 16th-century Romans. Matthew and his companions wear doublets, breeches, feathered berets. It's 1599 fashion. Jesus himself, though somewhat plainer, doesn't wear an ancient toga.
Caravaggio affirms that the Gospel happens now. Not in a mythical past. Now, in our streets, our taverns, our lives. The Incarnation isn't a distant historical event. It's a permanent possibility. God can show up here, today, in your shady exchange office or your clandestine poker club.
This contemporaneity shocks. Ecclesiastical patrons would like reassuring distance between the sacred and everyday. Caravaggio refuses. He says the sacred IS in the everyday. That there aren't two separate worlds. That there's only one world where divine and human mix, collide, mutually transform.
It's profoundly Counter-Reformist. The Catholic Church, facing Protestant Reformation, insists on ecclesiastical mediation, on the necessity of sacraments administered by priests. Caravaggio paints a direct encounter. No priest. No ritual. Just Jesus pointing and saying "Follow me."
It's dangerous. Subversive. But it's also exactly what the Counter-Reformation Church wants to show: that conversion is possible, immediate, radical. That the worst sinner can become saint in an instant. Matthew the publican becomes Saint Matthew the evangelist. The collaborator becomes apostle. Shit becomes gold.
The Rejection: The First Version Refused
Caravaggio actually paints two versions of the central altarpiece, Saint Matthew and the Angel. The first is rejected by patrons. It shows Matthew as an illiterate peasant, with dirty feet, whom a child angel explains how to write his Gospel by guiding his hand.
It's too much. Too realistic. Too vulgar. A saint can't have filthy feet. An evangelist can't be illiterate. Caravaggio crossed the line. Patrons reject the painting.
He paints a second, more "acceptable" one. Matthew is more dignified, more idealized. The angel no longer holds his hand like a child. The painting is accepted and installed.
But the first, the rejected one, is bought by a Roman collector, Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani. He'll keep it in his private collection. The painting will be destroyed in 1945 during Berlin's bombing. Only black and white photographs remain.
This rejection reveals the tension at Caravaggio's work's heart. He goes too far. He shows reality too crudely. He refuses to embellish. The Church wants edifying piety. Caravaggio gives raw truth. The Church wants icons. Caravaggio gives men.
The Contarelli Chapel: Theater of Light
The Calling of Saint Matthew isn't made to be seen in a museum under uniform lighting. It's painted for a specific chapel, with natural light coming from a specific window.
In San Luigi dei Francesi's Contarelli Chapel, the painting is on the left wall. Real light enters from a window on the right, out of sight. It strikes the painting in exactly the same direction as the painted light. Real and represented merge. The real window becomes the source of painted grace.
It's pure genius. Caravaggio transforms real architecture into the painting's extension. Chapel space and painting space are no longer separate. The visitor is included in the scene. They're in the tavern with Matthew. They too receive the call.
This fusion of real and represented anticipates all Baroque painting. Bernini will do the same in sculpture with The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, where real light from a hidden window illuminates the sculpture to create the illusion that the saint floats in celestial light. But Caravaggio is first. The pioneer of Roman Baroque.
After Caravaggio: Tenebrism Explodes
The Calling of Saint Matthew has a bombshell effect in Rome's artistic milieu. All young painters rush to see this revolutionary painting. They copy the technique. They imitate violent chiaroscuro. An entire school is born: the Caravaggisti.
Orazio Gentileschi. Artemisia Gentileschi. Bartolomeo Manfredi. Giovanni Baglione (who nevertheless hates Caravaggio and sues him for defamation). All adopt tenebrism.
The movement spreads across Europe. In Spain, Ribera and young Velázquez draw inspiration from Caravaggio. In the Netherlands, Utrecht painters like Terbrugghen and Van Honthorst bring back the technique. In France, Georges de La Tour creates his candlelit nocturnal masterpieces.
Even Rembrandt, who never saw an original Caravaggio, is influenced by Dutch Caravaggisti. His chiaroscuro, less violent, more subtle, descends in direct line from Caravaggesque tenebrism.
But nobody equals the master. Caravaggio remains unique in his ability to make shadow an active, menacing, thick presence. In his imitators, darkness is a background. In Caravaggio, it's an abyss. Characters aren't illuminated. They're saved from night.
What Jesus's Finger Still Points To
Four hundred twenty-five years after its creation, The Calling of Saint Matthew remains disturbingly current. Because it asks the question that haunts us all: are we called? And if so, by what? Toward what?
Matthew counts his money. It's his life. It's his identity. He's a publican. Tax collector. Legal racketeer. He makes good money exploiting others. And suddenly, a voice says "Follow me." Everything must change. Money, status, identity—everything must be abandoned.
The call is violent. It doesn't negotiate. It offers no compromise. It's all or nothing. Now. Immediately.
Caravaggio paints the tipping moment. The instant when old life ends and new life begins. That terrible and exhilarating moment when you let go of everything you know to dive into the unknown.
And he paints it without sugar-coating. Matthew isn't a nice repentant sinner. He's a gangster, a collaborator, scum. The men with him aren't good souls gone astray. They're criminals living off exploitation. Caravaggio says: even they can be called. Even they can change. Nobody's too rotten for grace.
It's an insanely radical message. In our world where everything's classified, judged, categorized—the good on one side, the bad on the other—Caravaggio says there's only one category: the called. And it can be anyone. The worst criminal can become saint. Scum can transform into gold.
But you must accept the call. Stand up from your table. Drop your gold coins. Follow.
Matthew stood up. He followed. He wrote a Gospel. He died a martyr.
And us? Jesus's finger in Caravaggio's painting still points. Across four centuries. Toward whom? Toward Matthew? Toward the young man bent over the table? Toward us looking at the painting?
The light still crosses darkness. It still strikes our faces. It still asks us: "You. Are you going to follow or are you going to keep counting your coins?"
Caravaggio died on a beach at thirty-eight. Alone. On the run. Probably murdered. His paintings traveled, survived wars, thefts, dubious restorations. The Calling of Saint Matthew is still there, in its chapel, in Rome, lit by the same lateral light merging with painted light.
And the finger still points.
At you.
The Calling of Saint Matthew: When God Enters a Dive | Art History
