An attribute with wings

Matthew is identified by a winged man, and the sign is older and more systematic than most: each of the four evangelists was assigned a creature, and the man belongs to him. Painting often turns the creature into an angel standing beside him while he writes, which is what this title names. The book and pen are secondary; the figure at his shoulder is the label. 6 titles in this collection name Matthew.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1602. The dimensions are 232 x 183 cm. It is filed under group portraiture, Religion and religious cultural heritage, with Baroque and Tenebrism as the styles and Italian as the nationality; the measured colour families are brown and yellow.

The location field reads Destroyed

Of the 611 works in this collection, this is the only one whose location field holds that word. Every other entry names a museum, a church, a private collection, or nothing at all. What the record establishes is that the catalogue has a date, a size, a style and a measured colour reading for a picture it does not place anywhere. That is a strange and specific kind of entry: a full description of an object with no address. This page reports the field as it stands. Any account of how or when the work was lost would require documents this catalogue does not contain, and none is offered here.