Caravaggio Paints the Calling of Saint Matthew

1601

In the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, the violent, brilliant Milanese painter Caravaggio unveiled a tax collector startled by Christ's summoning finger from a scene of velvet sleeves and chiaroscuro shadow. European painting woke up. Baroque realism, theatrical and sacred, had its manifesto, and artists from Rubens to Rembrandt would follow his torchlit path.