/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>The final painting in the cycle, the Inspiration of St. Matthew, is Matthew writing his Gospel. He has just arrived at a table — there’s an open book on it waiting for him — and dipped his pen into an inkwell. He’s so taken by something that he hasn’t even sat down and turns on one knee while standing. (The stool is about to fall off the ledge it’s on.) I’ve never seen anyone painted this way before or since. I know this pose in my bones, though. I’ve run to my desk in the grip of imagined inspiration like this, possessed. Matthew isn’t looking at the page. He looks above him at the same seraph we see in the Martyrdom. This angel gestures with his fingers as if counting — one, two, three, this, then that, then the next — as if establishing and clarifying the narrative of the life of Jesus that Matthew is attempting to set down. It is patient angelic aid for an author trying to get this right. In effect, the angel is consoling him, saying, “Okay, Matthew, first comes the Sermon on the Mount, then the loaves and the fishes, then his entry into Jerusalem, then the Last Supper.”