St Matthew (oil on canvas)

his Evangelist is from a group of eight pictures now in the Iliffe Collection, that comes from a set of twelve pictures of God the Father and the Apostles, originally painted for the town palace of Count Cesare and Fra Giuseppe Merenda in Forlí. They were Batoni's most dedicated patrons, commissioning at least 32 paintings from him between about 1740 and 1750. St. Matthew holds a manuscript, embodying his Gospel, whilst his traditional symbol, an angel, indicates a passage in a book — standing for the Old Testament prophecies whose fulfilment his contribution to the New Testament reveals — whilst pointing to Heaven as the source of his inspiration.