Calling of Saint Matthew

Calling of Saint Matthew, painted in 1621 and now in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, depicts the moment described in Matthew 9 when Christ calls the tax collector Matthew to follow him — a subject made famous by Caravaggio's revolutionary treatment in the Contarelli Chapel in Rome, which ter Brugghen had certainly seen during his Italian years. Caravaggio's version transformed this biblical moment into a scene of bourgeois genre realism, with tax collectors at a counting table suddenly interrupted by divine summons. Ter Brugghen's interpretation carries forward this naturalistic approach, presenting the figures as ordinary human beings caught at an extraordinary moment rather than as idealised religious types. The Calling of Matthew was particularly resonant in a Northern European Protestant context where conversion narratives — sudden divine election interrupting a worldly career — had theological significance beyond their narrative surface. The Centraal Museum's collection of ter Brugghen works allows comparison of this religious composition with his genre subjects, demonstrating the continuity of technique and observation across different subject categories.

The narrative requires distinguishing between the mundane activity of the tax collection scene and the divine interruption that arrests it — ter Brugghen achieves this through compositional direction and the orientation of figures' gazes. The lighting is typically Caravaggist, using focused illumination to direct attention to the moment of calling. Hands and faces carry the narrative's primary expressive weight.