Caravaggio, Calling of Saint Matthew and Inspiration of St. Matthew — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00(piano playing)
2. 0:05Dr. David Drogin: We're looking at
3. 0:06a really wonderful Caravaggio.
4. 0:09This is a painting of the Calling of Saint Matthew
5. 0:12in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.
6. 0:15Dr. Beth Harris: In the Contarelli Chapel.
7. 0:16David: That's right, in the larger church.
8. 0:18Beth: And it's in a chapel with two other paintings
9. 0:20by Caravaggio all about Matthew.
10. 0:23David: So, Matthew was one of Christ's disciples.
11. 0:26So, which one is he here?
12. 0:28Beth: It's a little hard to find him here, actually.
13. 0:31David: It's a complicated group of figures here.
14. 0:33Beth: It's very complicated.
15. 0:34I love the subject. Christ is walking in on the right.
16. 0:38David: Which one is Christ?
17. 0:39There are two figures on the right.
18. 0:40Beth: Yeah, I think Saint Peter is in front
19. 0:42of Christ on the right.
20. 0:44David: He's the sort of heavy, powerful ...
21. 0:46Beth: Rough looking guy.
22. 0:47David: Yeah, with the short, cropped hair.
23. 0:49Beth: And behind him, half obscured,
24. 0:52is facing us, is Christ with his arm outstretched.
25. 0:55David: He looks much more noble, younger,
26. 0:57more delicate actually.
27. 0:59Beth: And there's a kind of delicacy to his gestures
28. 1:03that remove him, I think, from the regular world
29. 1:06that the other figures seem to occupy
30. 1:08as he seems to point over and Matthew is the one
31. 1:11who is pointing to himself in disbelief.
32. 1:14David: He's the older figure with the large beard.
33. 1:16Beth: With a black hat.
34. 1:17David: Yes, and a dark tunic.
35. 1:19Beth: And I think, if I remember correctly,
36. 1:21the story is that Matthew is a tax collector
37. 1:23and he's sitting with his fellow tax collectors.
38. 1:26Christ walks in and sees Matthew and basically says,
39. 1:30"You, come with me."
40. 1:31David: And there's this moment of conversion.
41. 1:33This is this incredible moment of spiritual awakening.
42. 1:35Beth: Right, which is a very typical subject
43. 1:37in baroque art.
44. 1:38David: So, this notion of transformation.
45. 1:40Beth: At this moment that Christ says,
46. 1:42"Hey you, you're coming with me."
47. 1:44Matthew points to himself. "Me?"
48. 1:47David: "You can't possibly mean me."
49. 1:48Beth: Right. "I'm a tax collector."
50. 1:50David: Well, there's all kinds of negative
51. 1:52implications, it's not just that he's working for the IRS
52. 1:54for instance, right?
53. 1:55Beth: A little bit more shady even of an era.
54. 1:58David: It's much more shady.
55. 1:58I mean, look at the environment they're in.
56. 2:00This is so important for Caravaggio.
57. 2:01He's not showing Christ in Heaven.
58. 2:03He's not showing Christ in an elevated,
59. 2:06plasticized environment.
60. 2:07He's in this, what looks like the back room
61. 2:10of a tavern or a bar.
62. 2:11Beth: Yes.
63. 2:12David: And when we look at it,
64. 2:13it looks like he's surrounded by younger men
65. 2:16who are counting money.
66. 2:17Beth: Yeah, they're leaning over, sort of,
67. 2:18greedily, the figure especially on the left, counting money.
68. 2:21David: And they're armed.
69. 2:22They've got swords.
70. 2:24They're dressed in very fancy clothes.
71. 2:25Beth: Yeah, you sort of imagine one of them
72. 2:26whipping out their swords any second
73. 2:28and getting into a bar room brawl, almost.
74. 2:30David: That's right, but there's this real sense
75. 2:32that this money is not gotten legally.
76. 2:34I mean, imagine if you walked into a bar now
77. 2:36and you walked into the back room and there were
78. 2:38very overly dressed, ostentatiously dressed
79. 2:41young men with guns counting money.
80. 2:44(laughing)
81. 2:44Would that be an environment you'd want to be in?
82. 2:46Beth: I think that's what makes this moment
83. 2:47of conversion all the more wonderful.
84. 2:49David: But how potent this must have been
85. 2:51when this painting is made in 1599, 1600.
86. 2:54When Christ is being shown in really
87. 2:56this much more contemporary environment
88. 2:59and all of this is made real.
89. 3:01Beth: Very real. The figures are so removed
90. 3:04from the idealized beauty of the high Renaissance.
91. 3:07David: It must have been challenging, a little scary,
92. 3:09but really exciting.
93. 3:10Beth: When Caravaggio brings the spiritual down
94. 3:13to everyday level that we can all totally relate to
95. 3:16instead of that distance that was there
96. 3:18in the high Renaissance.
97. 3:19David: Which was really interesting.
98. 3:20If you think that, you know, these are paintings
99. 3:22in Rome with all the pomp and ceremony of Rome
100. 3:25and Caravaggio is giving such a fresh ...
101. 3:27Beth: I know, it's wonderful isn't it?
102. 3:28David: It's really fabulous, isn't it?
103. 3:29Beth: I know. The thing that I always think about
104. 3:31with this painting when I try to relate it
105. 3:32to living in the 21st century, I imagine
106. 3:35sometimes, my own version of a greedy moment.
107. 3:39Maybe it's the holidays and I'm supposed to be
108. 3:41shopping for friends and family and instead
109. 3:44I'm buying something for myself and I'm getting
110. 3:47my credit card out.
111. 3:48Try to imagine Christ walking in the door
112. 3:51of Banana Republic and saying,
113. 3:53"You. I've chosen you."
114. 3:56David: So out of context.
115. 3:56Look at the way that Caravaggio is handling light here.
116. 3:59Because it's not just Christ walking in.
117. 4:01He is the embodiment of a kind of spiritual force
118. 4:06in that, as he points to Matthew
119. 4:08and your eye can go from his glance,
120. 4:10across his hand to Matthew's finger ...
121. 4:13Beth: Following that diagonal line.
122. 4:14David: ... of the sunlight.
123. 4:15It seems to be pouring in, maybe a doorway
124. 4:18that they've opened, who knows what.
125. 4:19Beth: And it's as though that point of Christ
126. 4:21almost, there sends this piercing rays
127. 4:24to Matthew that gets to him, but also,
128. 4:27in a way interrupts this moment of reality in the tavern
129. 4:31so that he is, sort of, suspended between
130. 4:34this moment of calling and transformation
131. 4:36and conversion, but also this is so immersed
132. 4:39in his reality, of course, that's also
133. 4:41a very baroque characteristic of this caught,
134. 4:44extreme moment of time and also what's very
135. 4:48baroque about it that I appreciate this way
136. 4:50that the divine has entered everyday life.
137. 4:53David: Yeah, absolutely.
138. 4:54Beth: We see that in Saint Teresa
139. 4:56and in so many other baroque paintings.
140. 4:58David: In a sense, the baroque is taking
141. 4:59these intensely spiritual forms that have come
142. 5:02out of the Renaissance, maintaining the high
143. 5:04naturalism and really building on
144. 5:06the high naturalism of the Renaissance,
145. 5:07but putting it in an environment where,
146. 5:09as you said earlier, it is completely accessible
147. 5:12and very, very real and immediate.
148. 5:14Beth: I know. Almost sometimes, to me,
149. 5:16not just real and immediate, but almost
150. 5:18pedestrian and dirty.
151. 5:19David: Yeah.
152. 5:20Beth: If you look at the bare feet of Peter,
153. 5:21of Christ, there's something gritty about
154. 5:24Caravaggio's realism.
155. 5:26David: Look at the window.
156. 5:27It seems as if those panes have been covered
157. 5:28Beth: The soot.
158. 5:30The walls look dirty and grimy.
159. 5:31This is not an ideal environment at all.
160. 5:34I have one thing that's always been, I thought,
161. 5:36very curious.
162. 5:37If you look at Christ's hand,
163. 5:38there's a lot of attention that's compositionally
164. 5:40on that hand, right under the cross at the window
165. 5:42and that slight bend of the wrist.
166. 5:44It is the hand that Michael Angelo had painted,
167. 5:47Beth: Adam.
168. 5:49David: And here, in an interesting kind of reversal.
169. 5:52I mean, there has been a tradition, of course,
170. 5:54of seeing ...
171. 5:54Beth: Christ as the second Adam.
172. 5:56David: That's right.
173. 5:56Beth: Adam who causes the fall of mankind
174. 5:59and Christ who redeems mankind.
175. 6:01David: So, in a sense, bookends on this story.
176. 6:04Beth: And this moment of redemption,
177. 6:05personal redemption for Matthew.
178. 6:07David: Just as Adam was created, in a sense,
179. 6:09Matthew was recreated.
180. 6:11(piano playing)