Contarelli Chapel

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The Calling of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio, 1599-1600

The Contarelli Chapel, within the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, is famous for housing three paintings on the theme of Saint Matthew the Evangelist by the Baroque master Caravaggio.

The chapel commemorates the French cardinal Matthieu Cointrel, (Contarelli in Italian), who on his death in 1585 left an endowment and instructions for the decoration of the chapel which he had purchased within San Luigi dei Francesi ("Saint Louis of the French"), the church of the French community in Rome. The cardinal was rich - he had already paid for part of the construction of the church facade and put a large sum towards the high altar - and he specified that his chapel be decorated with scenes from the life of his name-saint, Matthew the Evangelist.

His executors commissioned a Flemish sculptor, Jacques Cobaert, to make a marble statue of Matthew and an angel for the altar. Giuseppe Cesari, one of the foremost artists then active in Rome, was contracted to fresco the two side walls and the vault. The details were clearly set out in the contract - Cobaert's altarpiece would show Matthew sitting in a chair, about to write the Gospel, with an angel standing and "appearing to reason or in other suitable pose." Cesari's side walls would show, on the right, Saint Matthew in his counting house (Matthew was a tax collector before becoming an apostle of Christ), suitably dressed, rising "to go to Our Lord, who, passing by with his disciples in the street, calls him..." On the left, Matthew at the moment of his martyrdom, celebrating Mass at the altar, with "a crowd of men and women, young and old and children...some appalled and others pitying..."

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio, 1599-1600

Cesari finished the vault by 1593, but then his attention and time were taken by Papal commissions. Cobaert produced nothing. In 1597 the money for the project was transferred to the Fabbrica di San Pietro, which administered the Church's buildings, yet still nothing happened. In 1599 preparations began for a Jubilee. "France...is not yet suffiently cleansed from the thorns and weeds of heresy and corruption," the Pope had told his French bishops. The new French king, Henri IV, had recently converted from Protestant to Catholic, but much remained to be done. Conversion, no less than martyrdom, was to be the Pope's theme with regard to France, Rome would be crowded with French pilgrims, and the chapel threatened to be boarded up. The clergy in charge of San Luigi became alarmed. The prefect in charge of the Fabricca, and of the money, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, suggested that his own personal painter, Michelangelo Merisi, known from his home town as Caravaggio, should be contracted to paint oils on canvas for the two side walls where Cesari would obviously never put his murals.

The contracts with Caravaggio were signed on 23 July 1599. Despite agonisings over the composition of the second painting, Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew were installed by July 1600. This was later than the contract called for (May 1660), but after more than two decades it must have been a relief to have anything at all. Moreover, the two paintings caused a sensation, and became the talk of Rome with their dramatic yet realistic approach to the familiar story from the Gospels. When Cobaert finally delivered his statues, the churchmen decided they didn't like them, and commissioned Caravaggio to do another painting for the altarpiece, still following the Cardinal's original instructions. The third and final work, The Inspiration de Saint Matthew, was in place by 1602 - although not without difficulty, the first version was rejected for the vulgarity of the saint's crossed legs and bare feet, and for the overly-familiar way in which the angel cuddled up to him. In the second version on view today the angel keeps a respectful distance, and the saint is a little more dignified.

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio, 1599-1600

Caravaggio's solution to decorating a typically gloomy Roman church interior was revolutionary and brilliant. Visitors to the Contarelli Chapel today are confronted with paintings that use the gloom instead of fighting against it. The paintings themselves are dark - mostly shadow - one can surmise that perhaps the opportunity to use large amounts of shadow freed the artist to meet his pressing deadline - but certainly there has been a gain in drama, as the highlighted figures of saints and executioners leap out of the enveloping dark. Caravaggio also considered the lighting in the chapel: each of the two side paintings is lit by a beam of light coming from the same direction as the natural lighting in the chapel itself.

Although the three paintings by Caravaggio are today the star attraction of the chapel, the frescos by Cesari, who, although overshadowed by Caravaggio, nevertheless represent the final flowering of the Mannerist school. The Cesari fresco was finished about 1593, at which point Caravaggio was working for Cesari - who was only two years older. Cesari, an acute businessman as well as a skilfull artist, valued his assistant's gift for painting flowers and fruit, and Caravaggio may have had a hand in the swags of greenery decorating the vault.