Head of Saint Matthew

Head of Saint Matthew from 1662 in the National Gallery of Art in Washington is related to but distinct from the celebrated Saint Matthew and the Angel of 1661 in the Louvre — a head study that refines and extends the psychological character established in the earlier canvas. The two paintings may represent different stages of Rembrandt's thinking about the apostle, or they may have been produced for separate purposes: the Louvre version as a completed composition, this one as an independent study of the same figure type. Matthew's specific associations made him a particularly humanistically interesting apostle: the collector of taxes, the improbable disciple, the evangelist whose Gospel was considered the most historically documentary of the four. Rembrandt's engagement with Matthew as a profoundly human figure — fallible, surprised by grace — belongs to the same theological sensibility that produced his intimate Christ images. The National Gallery of Art holds the work in the Mellon collection that founded the institution.

The aged face is built up with Rembrandt's late impasto technique — multiple layers applied with palette knife and brush, the surface deeply textured. Warm golden-brown light models the deeply furrowed brow, the beard painted with a dry, dragged brush. The background is nearly formless dark.