Private collection, South America,

Koelliker collection, Milan.

A. Lemoine, Nicolas Regnier (alias Niccolò Renieri) ca. 1588–1667. Peintre, collectioneur et marchand d’art, Paris, 2007, p. 334, no. R 38bis.

N. Spinosa, Caravaggism and the Baroque in Europe, exhibition catalogue, London, 2007, pp. 20–21.

P. Cavazzini, 'Peintre à Rome au tournant de Seicento' in S. Levy, A. Lemoine and A. Collange Perugi (eds.), Nicolas Régnier l’homme libre v. 1588–1667, exhibition catalogue, Nantes, 2017, pp. 63,  100.

So closely is he associated with the brilliant group of French Caravaggisti active in Rome in the early decades of the seventeenth century that Nicolas Régnier’s Flemish origins and early tracaining in Antwerp are often forgotten.[1] He was a pupil of Abraham Janssens, whose own work had already done much to disseminate the early influence of the Italian Baroque in the North, and whose pupils included some of the most important Flemish tenebrist painters. Régnier’s biographer and friend Joachim von Sandrart noted that upon his arrival in Rome, around 1615, he frequented the studio of Bartolomeo Manfredi, who was to be a continued influence on his style.

Saint Matthew and the Angel dates from around 1615–17. The figure of the elderly Evangelist is depicted slumped over his writing desk as if just roused from sleep by an adolescent angel who rests his hand on the saint’s shoulder. The composition and dramatic chiaroscuro with which it is rendered recall the first Saint Matthew and the Angel that Caravaggio painted in 1602 for the Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Famously rejected because of the supposedly indecorous pose of the saint, the painting was subsequently purchased by Vincenzo Giustiniani, one of the greatest collectors of the day. It is a picture which Régnier would have known very well; Giustiniani was one of Régnier’s most important patrons, and the artist lodged in Palazzo Giustiniani for part of his time in Rome. It certainly would have served Régnier as an inspiration for his own depictions of the subject. Among the nine canvases by the artist listed in the Giustiniani inventory of 1638, there is one depicting “S. Matteo [di mano di Nicolò Ranieri]…. in tela alta palmi 11 ½ Larga 9 ½ incirca senza cornici .”[2]

The Giustiniani Saint Matthew has yet to be identified (and cannot be associated with the present canvas), though other treatments of this subject dating from the years prior to the artist’s departure from Rome circa 1626 are extant. Perhaps the most compelling comparison with the present work may be made with the example in the collection of the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, generally dated to around 1622–25 (fig. 1).

Previously attributed to the Neapolitan artist Battistello Caracciolo, the present work was first given an attribution to Régnier at Sotheby’s in 2007 (New York, 25 January 2007, lot 48). In the same year, Annick Lemoine published the first comprehensive monograph on the French artist. At the time she had only seen the painting in the Sotheby’s catalogue and preferred to publish the painting in the section of attributed works. Ten years later, on the occasion of Robilant+Voena’s exhibition In Pursuit of Caravaggio, it was finally possible for Lemoine to study the painting first-hand and she confirmed its autograph status, dating it to the very early years of the artist’s stay in Italy, around 1615–17. This attribution was further confirmed by Lemoine and Patrizia Cavazzini in the catalogue of the monographic exhibition dedicated to Régnier in Nantes in 2017.

[1] Régnier was born in the town of Maubeuge, then in the French speaking Flemish province of Hainaut, which was later ceded to France in the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678.

[2] [Trans: "St. Matthew (by the hand of Nicolo Raineri) on canvas about 11 1.2 palmi high by 9 ½ across, unframed"]. The painting was hung in the same room with three other canvases representing the other evangelists by Domenichino, Reni and Albani. It might be supposed that the canvases formed an impromptu set, even though the Reni was of a slightly smaller size, and the other three were of matching measurements. Of all the canvases, only the Domenichino of Saint John the Evangelist is identifiable (see R. Spear, Domenichino, New Haven and London 1982, pp. 270–72). See also S. Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani, Turin 2003, vol. I, pp. 343–44.