The story
San Luigi dei Francesi is a working church, the national church of the French in Rome, a few steps from Piazza Navona. Most visitors walk past the gilded nave to the last chapel on the left. It is usually dim and crowded, and it holds three canvases by Caravaggio on the life of Saint Matthew, the tax collector who became an apostle.
The chapel belonged to a French cardinal, Matthieu Cointerel, known in Rome as Contarelli, who died in 1585 and left money for scenes of his namesake saint. The decoration dragged on for years. In July 1599 his heirs signed a contract with Caravaggio, not yet 30 and recommended by his patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. By July 1600 the two side paintings were in place. On the left is The Calling, where a shaft of light crosses a room of men counting coins as Christ points toward Matthew. On the right is The Martyrdom, the saint struck down at the altar. It was his first major public commission, and it made his name in Rome.
The altarpiece took two attempts. His first version of Matthew writing with an angel was refused, passed to the collector Vincenzo Giustiniani and later to the Berlin museums, and was destroyed there in 1945. The replacement, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, went above the altar in 1602 and is still there.
The church itself took most of the 16th century to build and was consecrated in 1589. Its facade carries statues of Charlemagne and of Saint Louis, the French king it is named for. In the second chapel on the right, the Bolognese painter Domenichino frescoed the life of Saint Cecilia between 1612 and 1615, including a scene of her handing out clothes to the poor.
