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Contarelli chapel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Contarelli Chapel in the mid 16th century by the French cardinal Mathieu Cointreau (Matteo Contarelli in his adopted Italian) and is in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi the French national church in Rome, Italy. It is the first chapel to the left of the apse The prescribed works were to be based on the life of St. Matthew, the cardinal's name saint. After his death, his sole heir and the executor of his will was Virglio Cresenzi, and Italian and not a family member, a fact that led to numerous conflicts over the ensuing few years. Cresenzi initially commissioned a German artist to complete an altarpiece of St. Matthew and the Angel, which was poorly executed, the church refused to place it on the altar. Shortly thereafter, the artistic undertakings of the chapel fell under the auspices of the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the Vatican institution in charge of artistic projects in the churches of Rome. Cardinal del Monte, a Prefect of the Fabbrica, proposed his friend, the young artist, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known simply as Caravaggio, as a potential executor of the series funded so many years earlier.
The decorative cycle began with the painting on the left side of the chapel, invisible to the viewer when first entering the church. It is a large panel of the Calling of St. Matthew, one of Carvaggio's most well-known works. On the right of the composition, Jesus and St. Peter look directly at a seated Matthew. Garbed in robes of antiquity, Jesus and his companion fit perfectly into the scene. Jesus points at Matthew, producing the Calling aspect. His hand is a direct reference to the receiving hand of Adam in the Creation of Adam panel on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Matthew and his companions, in contrast, are wearing robes concurrent with Caravaggio's time. Matthew points at himself in a "Who, me?" gesture with one hand, while his other fingers coins on the table, referencing his previous vocation as a tax collector. Recent scholarship has come to light that suggests that the young boy, with his head down at the end of the table, is actually Matthew, and the older, bearded man is pointing at him, instead.
On the right side of the wall, visible upon entry, is the Martyrdom of St. Matthew, depicting the scene in which Matthew meets his ultimate end. In contrast to the relatively staid Calling on the opposing wall, this scene is full of action, swirling around the composition of hands at the center. Matthew at once wards off his attacker while reaching for the martyr's palm being dangled just out of his reach by the angel. Interesting components in this work include the nudes in the foreground who watch the scene unobtrusively, almost as if this is a theatrical production and the self portrait of Caravaggio in the background (the bearded man).
At the center of the chapel is St. Matthew and the Angel, a scene in which an angel dictates to St. Matthew the gospel. Though not as intrinsically interesting as the other two, it provides an interesting interaction with the viewer's space. St. Matthew, jumping up to greet the angel, pushes his stool out over an apparent threshold created by the artist and into the realm of the viewer, this completes the interactive nature of this chapel, resulting in an intra-personal dialogue.