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Sacred Paintings

  • Home
  • New Page
  • Writings on the Theology of Art by James Patrick Reid
    • Fitly Framed Together: Art, Sports, and the Building Up of the Body of Christ
    • Matisse and Russian Icons
    • A Few Words on Traditional and Modern Art in the Light of Metaphysics
    • The Art of the Beautiful Lecture Series in New York
    • The Metaphysics of Art (Article in "The Catholic Thing")
    • Invisible Things Clearly Seen
    • Art and the Transfiguration of the World
  • Paintings by James Patrick Reid
  • The Iconography of The Baptism of Christ
  • The iconography in the "Annunciation"
  • The iconography in "Nazareth"
  • Byzantine Icons by the hand of James Patrick Reid
  • About James Patrick Reid
  • Blog -- Meditations on Sacred Masterworks
  • Contact

The Calling of Saint Matthew, painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

September 21, 2016

The artist has ingeniously painted the hand of Christ as a mirror image of the hand of Adam in Michelangelo Buonarotti's creation of Adam scene on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. So now the hand which bestows life and summons to service, the hand of God, is also the hand of the Son of Man (Ben-Adam in Hebrew). It is this hand of the Word made Flesh which directs the light -- the light which reveals our sinfulness and makes it possible for us to repent. As Saint Bede the Venerable wrote concerning this event, "Our Lord summoned Matthew by speaking to him in words. By an invisible, interior impulse flooding his mind with the light of grace, he instructed him to walk in his footsteps."

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Sacred Paintings Blog

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