The Calling of St Matthew by Caravaggio explained! 

Excellent commentary

Fascinating! Thank you!

Great work of art and very well exaplined!

Amazing channel!!

Good video Alessandro.

I thought you had 327k subs, turns out there is no k :(. I hope you will reach it some day

This is great! Could you make a video about the works of his best follower, Artemisia Gentileschi?

Great interpretation, I would just add my feeling that the closed window shows that the only true light comes from Jesus direction, so there is no need to open it, the true nature of the natural light comes from the warm light of the real human approach, that is why Jesus aureola is just little bit shown, and the shadow side of money only can be lightened up when being constructively used.

If you look at the history, the painting was modified at least twice by Caravaggio. Every time he modified, he changed Matthew. Jesus's hand was repainted with a slightly different position. So, all three were Matthew. Caravaggio changed the Matthew when he modified the painting.

I think Matthew is the bearded man only. He is the only one who is looking at Jesus. Also he matches with the other two Matthew paintings. Just my opinion

I don't place so much significance into every detail when I see a work of art. After all, in the end, all this can simply be your opinion. There's nothing anywhere, in any records, indicating whether all these things are facts. I never thought the bearded man was pointing at himself. To me, he seems to be pointing at the young man, as if saying : "Him?" The other old man has no meaning for me. He seems to be working with the young one, not implying the ageing process. I don't know why you see that ? There's a group of people at a table and Jesus walks in and points at someone, and the old man's pointing at the youth is taking our attention to the fact that it's the young one that Jesus wants. The rest of the characters are just "hanging out" together . The painting is. like all of Caravaggio's works, a beautiful masterpiece. I'd like to see a painter today come up with a work of remotely similar quality. Painters back then started learning every part of the process, from making the paints by hand and using each brush, to getting a finished painting. By the time they were grown up, they had learned everything about making a painting from scratch. AND first, they had to learn how to draw .