San Luigi dei Francesi

Step in from the street and the noise drops away at once. Outside, scooters rattle over the cobbles between Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. Inside, the air is cool and smells faintly of wax and old stone. Your eyes need a moment. The nave is dim, and gold glints from the ceiling and the side chapels. Somewhere on your left, a small crowd is gathered in near silence, looking at one dark corner. That corner is why most people come here.

This is San Luigi dei Francesi, the church of the French in Rome. For centuries it has served the French community living in the city, and it still does today. It is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to Saint Louis, the thirteenth-century King Louis the Ninth of France, who was made a saint after his death on crusade. The French state still has a close connection to the church. In a sense, you are standing in a small piece of France in the middle of Rome.

Before you go deeper inside, think back to the façade you passed on the way in. It is pale travertine, the creamy limestone used across Rome, and it is usually attributed to the architect Giacomo della Porta. The church was completed in the late sixteenth century, with support from the French crown and from Catherine de' Medici, the Florentine queen of France. Look up next time you leave. Stone statues of French royal saints stand in the niches, among them Charlemagne and Saint Louis himself.

There is a small surprise in that façade, too. Carved into the stone are salamanders, the personal emblem of the French king Francis the First. In old belief, the salamander could live in fire without burning. Most visitors walk straight past these little creatures. They are a quiet reminder that this building was a statement of French royal identity, placed only a short walk from the Pantheon and the heart of papal Rome.

Now walk down the left side of the nave toward the altar. The last chapel on the left is the Contarelli Chapel. It was paid for by a French cardinal, Matthieu Cointrel, whose name was turned into Italian as Contarelli. He wanted the chapel decorated with scenes from the life of Saint Matthew, his name saint. The cardinal died before the work was finished. Years later, around 1600, the commission went to a young and still fairly new painter in Rome. His name was Michelangelo Merisi, but the world knows him as Caravaggio.

This was his first major public commission in a church. It made him famous almost overnight. There are three large canvases here. On the left wall hangs The Calling of Saint Matthew. On the right is The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. Above the altar is The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Together they tell the story of one man, from the moment he is chosen, to the moment he writes, to the moment he dies.

Start with The Calling, on the left. It is set in a dark, plain room that looks like a Roman tavern or counting house. Tax collectors sit around a table with coins, wearing the fashionable clothes of Caravaggio's own day. From the right, Christ enters, half hidden behind Saint Peter. He raises his hand and points. A sharp beam of light cuts across the wall above him and falls on the faces at the table. Everything in the painting turns on that light.

Here is a detail many people miss. Look closely at Christ's hand. Its shape is very similar to the hand of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by the earlier Michelangelo. Many historians see this as a deliberate echo — a new calling, a new creation. Notice, too, that the painted light comes from the right, the same direction as the real light in the chapel. Caravaggio planned the picture for this exact space.

There is also a long debate hidden in the scene. Which man is Matthew? For a long time, most people believed it was the bearded man pointing to himself, as if asking, is it me? Some scholars now argue that Matthew is the young man at the end of the table, head bowed, still counting his coins. Look for yourself. The painting does not give a simple answer, and that may be the point.

Turn to the right wall and The Martyrdom. It is violent and crowded. A half-naked executioner stands over the fallen saint, and onlookers pull back in shock. Above, an angel reaches down with a palm branch, the traditional symbol of martyrdom. In the background, behind the killer, a bearded man looks back over his shoulder with a troubled face. Many people believe this is a self-portrait of Caravaggio, watching the scene he painted. X-ray studies have shown that he reworked this canvas heavily before he was satisfied.

The painting above the altar also has a story. Caravaggio's first version of The Inspiration was rejected. It showed Matthew as a rough, plain man, with an angel guiding his hand like a teacher with a child. The clergy found it too coarse for an altar. That first canvas later went to a collection in Berlin, where it was destroyed at the end of the Second World War. The version you see now is the replacement, calmer and more formal, with the angel floating above.

Before you leave, do not skip the rest of the church. On the right side of the nave, look for the chapel with frescoes of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. They were painted in the early seventeenth century by Domenichino, an artist from Bologna. His style is clear, graceful and balanced — almost the opposite of Caravaggio's deep shadows. Seeing both in one building shows you two very different paths that Roman painting took at the same moment in history.

Take one last look back at the Contarelli Chapel from the middle of the nave. From here, the canvases are dark shapes in gold frames, and the small crowd still stands in front of them. Four centuries ago, Romans stood in this same spot and saw something new — saints who looked like people from their own streets. When you step back outside, into the light and the noise, notice the faces at the café tables nearby. Caravaggio painted people just like them.