A masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio, a painter of the
baroque era, completed in 1599-1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation,
San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.
The church is located in the neighborhood of Piazza Navona.
Caravaggio represented the event as a nearly silent,
dramatic narrative. The sequence of actions before and after this moment can be
easily and convincingly re-created. The tax-gatherer Levi (Saint Matthew's name
before he became the apostle) was seated at a table with his four assistants,
counting the day's proceeds, the group lighted from a source at the upper right
of the painting. Christ, His eyes veiled, with His halo the only hint of
divinity, enters with Saint Peter. A gesture of His right
hand, all the more powerful and compelling because of its languor,
summons Levi. Surprised by the intrusion and perhaps dazzled by the sudden
light from the just-opened door, Levi draws back and gestures toward himself
with his left hand as if to say, "Who, me?", his right hand remaining
on the coin he had been counting before Christ's entrance.
Johannes Vermeer van Delft (1632-
1675) the painter of meditative portraits
and of poetical domestic scenes was
a master of rendering the almost material quality of light falling on rich
textures, on the delicate traces of a face or on a pearl. Girl
with the Pearl Earring won in
the past years a well deserved fame through Tracy Chevalier’s novel and through
the homonymous film; a consuming story of unconventional love and renunciation
in an exquisite patrician environment.
The portrait can be admired in Royal Cabinet of
Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Albrecht
Dürer (1471 1528), painter
and graphic artist, was the central figure in the German Renaissance and one of
the most outstanding personalities in the history of art. In the year 1500 Dürer
painted a self portrait in a hieratical pose that up his time was only reserved
for kings and for Jesus, whose features he was emulating in it. This portrait represents his own
interpretation of the biblical figure and his belief in the divine inspiration
as the source of the artist’s creative powers.
The remarkable force of the portrait is emanating from the balanced
focus of the stare.