''St. Matthew'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by the

Dutch Golden Age painter Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Repub ...

Frans Hals Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...

, painted in 1625 and now in the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art,

Odesa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative ...

Painting

The painting shows

Saint Matthew Matthew the Apostle,, shortened to ''Matti'' (whence ar, مَتَّى, Mattā), meaning "Gift of YHWH"; arc, , Mattai; grc-koi, Μαθθαῖος, ''Maththaîos'' or , ''Matthaîos''; cop, ⲙⲁⲧⲑⲉⲟⲥ, Mattheos; la, Matthaeus a ...

sitting at a desk reading with an angel at his elbow.De evangelist Matteüs
in record for this painting in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

This painting was documented in the 18th century but was considered lost until the 1950s, when two

tronies A tronie is a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. These works were not intended as portraits but as studies of expression, type, physiognom ...

were discovered languishing in the storerooms of the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art in 1958 by art historian Irina Linnik. At the time they were considered to be by unknown 19th-century painters, but Linnik recognized them as the work of a 17th-century master and eventually traced their history back to the 17th century, identifying them as two of four lost paintings by Hals of the evangelists, namely Luke and Matthew. After her work was published in 1959, the two paintings were included in the 1962 Frans Hals exhibition in the

Frans Hals Museum The Frans Hals Museum is a museum located in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The museum was established in 1862. In 1950, the museum was split in two locations when the collection of modern art was moved to the '' Museum De Hallen'' (since 2018 called ...

. The international attention helped to spur art detectives and eventually the other two of John and Mark were also rediscovered. In his 1989 catalog of the international Frans Hals exhibition, Slive included a photo of Hals'

Two singing boys with a lute and a music book ''Two singing boys with a lute and a music book'' is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted ''c.'' 1625 and now in the Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe. Painting This painting was documented by Hofstede de Groot in 1910, who ...

to show that his theme of a main subject with a secondary witness was common to many of Hals' paintings of the 1620s and the models as secondary witness in these two paintings were clearly cousins. ''Frans Hals'', by

Seymour Slive Seymour Slive (September 15, 1920 – June 14, 2014) was an American art historian, who served as director of the Harvard Art Museums from 1975 to 1984. Slive was a scholar of Dutch art, specifically of the artists Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Ja ...

as editor, with contributions by

Pieter Biesboer Pieter Biesboer (born 1944), is a Dutch art historian and prolific writer on 17th-century Dutch art. His specialty is art from Haarlem. Career Biesboer was a curator at Stedelijk Museum het Prinsenhof in Delft during the years 1973-1976. Bie ...

, Martin Bijl, Karin Groen and Ella Hendriks, Michael Hoyle, Frances S. Jowell, Koos Levy-van Halm and Liesbeth Abraham, Bianca M. Du Mortier, Irene van Thiel-Stroman, page 195, Prestel-Verlag, Munich & Mercatorfonds, Antwerp, 1989, Two singing boys and Matthew: File:Frans Hals - Two Boys Singing - WGA11077.jpg, ''Two singing boys'' File:Frans Hals - St Matthew - Museum of Western European and Oriental Art, Odessa.jpg, ''St. Matthew'' The four evangelists by Hals: File:Frans Hals 086 WGA version.jpg, ''

St. Luke Luke the Evangelist (Latin: '' Lucas''; grc, Λουκᾶς, '' Loukâs''; he, לוקאס, ''Lūqās''; arc, /ܠܘܩܐ לוקא, ''Lūqā’; Ge'ez: ሉቃስ'') is one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of t ...

'' File:Frans Hals - St Matthew - Museum of Western European and Oriental Art, Odessa.jpg, ''St. Matthew'' Frans Hals 085.jpg, '' St. Mark'' File:Frans Hals 087.jpg, '' St. John''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Matthew (Hals) Paintings by Frans Hals Ukrainian art 1625 paintings Paintings in Ukraine Hals Books in art Angels in art

Painting

See also

References