The Calling of St Matthew

The panel carries the date 1524, and that year matters. Germany was in religious uproar. Luther had put the New Testament into German just two years before, and arguments about money, sin, and who could be saved were everywhere. The subject fits that mood exactly. Matthew is a tax collector, called by Christ to leave his table of coins and follow him. A man whose whole life was money, chosen in a moment. Who painted this we do not know. It is unsigned, and no name has ever stuck to it, which was ordinary for a working church panel of the time. The one thing it states plainly about itself is that date, 1524.