San Luigi dei Francesi

Church · Sant'Eustachio (steps from Piazza Navona)Rome,Italy

The French national church in Rome, holding three Caravaggios still on the chapel walls they were painted for.

San Luigi dei Francesi keeps three paintings by Caravaggio on the walls they were made for, which very few places anywhere can say. The church belongs to the French in Rome and is still their national church in the city. Walk to the last chapel on the left and there they are. A French cardinal, Matteo Contarelli, left the money for that chapel and died before it was decorated; the commission eventually reached Caravaggio, not yet thirty and with nothing public to his name. He put the calling of Matthew on the left wall and his killing on the right, and added the altarpiece between them afterwards. The two side canvases hang high beneath a real window, and the light painted inside them falls in the same direction. The beam that lights Matthew in his dark room looks as if it comes from the chapel window itself. The altarpiece is Caravaggio's second version, because the first one was refused. The chapel holds about twenty people, and a custodian keeps it quiet.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The midday closure is the usual way to miss this church — it shuts for roughly two hours in the middle of the day, and on Sundays it generally opens only in the afternoon.
Aim for the first half hour after reopening — There is one place to stand with a clear view, and by mid-morning the crowd in front of it is three deep.
Silence here is enforced rather than requested — a custodian stands in the chapel and stops both conversation and tripods, so decide what you want to look at before you step in.

Things to do

1
Wait at the chapel rail for the light
Take a place at the rail of the last chapel on the left and wait for the lamps. In the dark the canvases are almost unreadable; when the light comes up, the calling scene resolves into a shabby room with a table of men counting money and a shaft of light crossing it.
2
Compare the paintings on the two side walls
Left wall: a man is called and the room barely notices. Right wall: the same man is killed, and everyone is moving at once. Stand in the centre and turn from one to the other, and you get the beginning and end of a life in two pictures.
3
Stay for the frescoed chapel on the right
When the Caravaggio chapel fills up, walk to the second chapel on the right, where Domenichino painted the life of Saint Cecilia across the walls and vault in the 1610s. It is calm, almost always empty, and gives you a direct comparison with the Caravaggio paintings opposite.