Sunday, August 9, 2020

07 works, Today, August 9th, is Saint Matthias's day, his story illustrated #221

Peter Paul Rubens  (1577–1640)
St. Matthias, circa 1611
Oil on canvas Edit this at Wikidata
height: 107.2 cm (42.2 in); width: 82.5 cm (32.4 in)
Museo del Prado

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish Baroque painter. A proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, Rubens is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.
In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England.  More Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Simone Martini
Saint Matthias, circa 1317 –1319
Tempera on wood, gold ground
11 5/8 x 8 5/8 in. (29.5 x 21.9 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art


Simone Martini (c. 1284 – 1344) was an Italian painter born in Siena. He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style.

It is thought that Martini was a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the leading Sienese painter of his time. According to late Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari, Simone was instead a pupil of Giotto di Bondone, with whom he went to Rome to paint at the Old St. Peter's Basilica, Giotto also executing a mosaic there. Martini's brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation of Simone's life survives, and many attributions are debated by art historians. More on Simone Martini

 Matthias was, according to the Acts of the Apostles, chosen by the apostles to replace Judas Iscariot following the latter's betrayal of Jesus and his subsequent death. His calling as an apostle is unique, in that his appointment was not made personally by Jesus, who had already ascended into heaven.


Unknown artist
The assembled disciples cast lots
I have no further description of this artwork at this time


Unknown artist
The lot fell to Matthias
I have no further description of this artwork at this time

There is no mention of a Matthias among the lists of disciples or followers of Jesus in the three synoptic gospels, but according to Acts, the fifth book of the New Testament, he had been with Jesus from his baptism by John until his Ascension. In the days following, Peter proposed that the assembled disciples, who numbered about 120, nominate two men to replace Judas. They chose Joseph called Barsabas and Matthias. Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

Matthias first preached the Gospel in Judaea, then in Aethiopia (Georgia) and was there stoned to death. An extant Coptic Acts of Andrew and Matthias, places his activity similarly in "the city of the cannibals" in Aethiopia, the desert land west of the southern Nile river. A marker placed in the ruins of the Roman fortress at Gonio,  on the Black Sea, claims that Matthias is buried at that site.

Caravaggio, (1571–1610)
The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, circa 1599–1600
Oil on canvas
Height: 323 cm (10.5 ft); Width: 343 cm (11.2 ft)
San Luigi dei Francesi Church, Rome

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 in Caravaggio – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano who had himself trained under Titian. In his twenties Caravaggio moved to Rome where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious. Caravaggio's innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro which came to be known as tenebrism (the shift from light to dark with little intermediate value).

He gained attention in the art scene of Rome in 1600 with the success of his first public commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons, yet he handled his success poorly. He was jailed on several occasions, vandalized his own apartment, and ultimately had a death sentence pronounced against him by the Pope after killing a young man, possibly unintentionally, on May 29, 1606. He fled from Rome with a price on his head. He was involved in a brawl in Malta in 1608, and another in Naples in 1609. This encounter left him severely injured. A year later, at the age of 38, he died under mysterious circumstances in Porto Ercole in Tuscany, reportedly from a fever while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.

Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. More on Caravaggio


Dorotheus maintains that "Matthias preached the Gospel to barbarians and meat-eaters in the interior of Ethiopia,  (not the African country, but a region south of the Caspian Sea) and was buried there, near the Temple of the Sun."

Robert van den Hoecke, (1622–1668)
St. Matthias, c. before 1668
Oil on copper
Mont-de-Piété de Bergues

Robert van den Hoecke (30 November 1622 in Antwerp – 1668 in Bergues-Saint-Winoc) was a Flemish painter, engraver and architect. He is principally known for his panoramic battle scenes as well as his landscape paintings. 

He started his career in Antwerp, then moved to Brussels where he entered into the service of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. Following his appointment by the Archduke to the position of Controller of fortifications in the service of his Majesty in Flanders. He was responsible for all defence works in Flanders.

Robert van den Hoecke was the son of the painter Gaspar van den Hoecke. Robert was likely a pupil of his father. He was admitted as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1644–45 in his capacity as a son of a master.

By 1649 van den Hoecke had left Antwerp for Brussels where he became a court painter of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. Here he joined up with his half-brother Jan, court painter of the Archduke since 1644. 

Examples of the religious compositions in his oeuvre are the series of twelve paintings on copper depicting the Twelve Apostles, in the collection of the Musée du Mont-de-Piété in Bergues. More on Robert van den Hoecke

Jan de Beer, (1475–1528)
Martyrdom of Saint Matthias, between circa 1510 and 1515 
Oil on panel 
Height: 25.5 cm (10 in); Width: 41.5 cm (16.3 in)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Jan de Beer, formerly known as the Master of the Milan Adoration (c. 1475 – 1528) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and glass designer active in Antwerp at the beginning of the 16th century. He is considered one of the most important members of the loose group of painters active in and around Antwerp in the early 16th century referred to as the Antwerp Mannerists. Highly respected in his time, he operated a large workshop with an important output of religious compositions. More on Jan de Beer


Alternatively, another tradition maintains that Matthias was stoned at Jerusalem by the local populace, and then beheaded. According to Hippolytus of Rome, Matthias died of old age in Jerusalem. More on Saint Matthias




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