It's probably impossible for us to get into that frame of mind to a time before tv film, photography and Tiktok when the only visual arts depicting the human form were painting and sculpture in the 16th century.

The art world in Italy and beyond had seen the high renaissance with its paintings devoted to ideal beauty, linear perspective and balanced compositions yield to mannerism and it's exaggerated form, strange juxtapositions, complex, sometimes overly sophisticated paintings that emphasized the artist's talents and fanciful impulses.

Then you walk into a church in Rome and see this.

It must have been shocking, maybe even too much to handle for some.

It's dramatic, crystal clear.

So I don't know, so visceral that you feel exposed, vulnerable involved.

It's Caravaggio's the calling of ST Matthew, you're seeing the moment that jesus christ calls Matthew the tax collector to be his disciple, as it says in Matthew 99, jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth.

Follow me, he told him and Matthew got up and followed him in the scripture.

It's an immediate reaction, but Caravaggio inserts a moment here.

A moment of hesitation, jesus enters what looks like a tavern obscured by Saint Peter and almost entirely in shadow except for his hand arm, the side of his face and the slightest glimmer on the halo over his head, he points out Matthew who, instead of getting up and going like the gospel says, points at himself as if to say who me to the left of him.

Two of his fellow money men don't even realize the divine presence has arrived, consumed by their worldly matters to Matthew's right, two young men are startled in opposite directions, one leading toward jesus and one leaning away amplifying Matthews moment of indecision.

The scene makes sense right away, but Caravaggio goes much further than just intelligibility.

What really shocks about this painting is of course the light, the intensely dramatic play of light and shadow called chiaroscuro or when it's so pronounced like this terrorism, the harsh light coming from the upper right of the canvas like divine illumination points out Matthew more forcefully than jesus does, but it's not unrealistic the opposite.

In fact, it's a kind of light.

We know we've seen it before.

That color that angle, it triggers our memories of late afternoon sunlight when we're reminded how dramatic reality really is.

And what's more light from that side angle removes the need to add background space to simulate three dimensions.

The way it wraps around the characters.

Does that job just as well.

So that Caravaggio can put a flat wall or a dark space behind his scene and his figures pop out like they're on a stage or in a dreamlike void, A kind of hyper reality.

See how he achieves the same effect in this painting, Judith beheading Hello ferns or David with the head of Goliath or the crucifixion of ST peter or my personal favorite, the taking of christ which was only rediscovered in 1990 by the way.

I mean, it's like you're there crowded in that group, you can hear the medal of the knights armor, the scream of saint john fleeing, you can feel judas hand on jesus's arm, his kiss as he betrays his friend.

You're caught up in it.

You know, it's worth noting that this is exactly the kind of painting that the catholic church wanted during the counter reformation as it pushed back against protestantism.

One of the council of trends decrees was that art should strive to help christians understand and reconnect with their faith with so many illiterate people.

Painting was a crucial way to transmit the stories of catholic doctrine and Caravaggio's work is not only easily understandable, it stirs deep emotion in its immediacy, it puts passion into the passion of jesus.

See Caravaggio's other great innovation was in his casting of real people in these biblical roles he painted from life.

So his mary Magdalene, for example, was someone you might see walking the streets of Rome in the year 1600 to some of this realism was vulgar, but to others looking for humanity in these stories.

Caravaggio's figures were revelatory, heightening the feelings of identification and involvement that the church wanted from art.

The irony, of course, is that Caravaggio himself was a deeply sinful person by all accounts, a complete jerk given to street brawls and petulant outbursts, which often resulted in jail time.

In 16 06, he killed a man in a duel and was forced to flee Rome.

He bounced around Italy after that.

Getting in trouble everywhere he went until he finally died.

We think of illness in 16 10 at age 38 no doubt his pension for violent extremes contributed to the haunting renderings of violence in his work.

But the romantic stereotype of the mad and frenzied artist who dies before his time is a tired one and you can't help but wonder what he might have shown us.

That he just calm down and lived twice as long because what we have got is extraordinary.

You can see that he was grappling with his sins and his faith in his work, In the taking of Christ for example, he paints himself into the scene rushing in with the guards eager to witness the betrayal, the arrest of Jesus.

He holds a lantern signifying the power of the artist to illuminate the stories that mean the most to us to make them personal realer than real.

Maybe it is possible to know what it was like for people to see a caravaggio painting for the first time in 1605, his light has traveled 400 years through time, undimmed against.

It were just as defenseless as they were.

Hey everybody thank you so much for watching this episode was brought to you by squarespace.

If you don't know, you can use squarespace to make really beautiful websites for anything.

You might need a personal site, a wedding website, a site for your business or portfolio.

And in just a few clicks you can have that website up and running.

Their design team is crafted amazing templates that work on computer browsers and on mobile, switching perfectly between the two.

You can integrate your own photos and videos with just a few clicks and you can even link your social accounts so that you can auto post to twitter and facebook all from within squarespace.

Head over to squarespace dot com for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch that site, go to squarespace dot com slash nerd writer for 10% off your first purchase.

Thanks guys.