Style
Caravaggio was known for painting very realistically, using models instead of standard convention and idealization. He made his figures lifelike and relatable, as opposed to portraying unrealistic or phony poses. In this instance, however, the patrons wanted an idealization of the beloved Saint, someone who its viewers could admire and strain to be like. They did not want a bumbling peasant who looked as if he just walked in off the street. With the angel sweeping down and the Saint’s stool teetering in movement, it is arguably one of Caravaggio’s earliest examples of his dynamic style. It was a much more exciting composition then the first. Even though Caravaggio changed the composition to suit the desires of the patron, you can still see his own style under the more refined subject of Saint Matthew.
Read more about this topic: Saint Matthew And The Angel
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Sometimes among our more sophisticated, self-styled intellectuals—and I say self-styled advisedly; the real intellectual I am not sure would ever feel this way—some of them are more concerned with appearance than they are with achievement. They are more concerned with style then they are with mortar, brick and concrete. They are more concerned with trivia and the superficial than they are with the things that have really built America.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)