The Calling of Saint Matthew

Movement: Baroque Baroque art wants you inside the moment, and Caravaggio stages one like a scene in a dark tavern. Christ points from the shadows, and a hard beam of light cuts across the room to the tax collector Matthew at the table, catching him just as he is called. The deep contrast of black shadow and bright light, the ordinary clothes and the frozen split second all show the movement's goal: faith made physical and immediate. Painted in 1599 to 1600, it is still in the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it was made to hang. What came next: in 18th-century France, the mood lightened into pastel flirtation.