The story of “The Calling of Saint Matthew” begins on a hot summer day in Rome in 1600, the Jubilee Year. The entire Eternal City is a construction site: streets are full of scaffolding, dust clouds, loose cobblestones, the continuous banging of hammers and rasping of saws, carpenters with Lombard accents, errand boys shouting across the streets in Roman dialect, stevedores unloading barrels and crates from boats along the Tiber. The narrow streets in the town center are full of jostling tourists and monsignors rushing to get somewhere, and every once in a while the crowd parts to let a sedan chair or carriage of a cardinal through. Convent bells ring, droves of pilgrims mass along the routes connecting the old basilicas, reciting the rosary as they go. Not a day goes by without the opening of a new church, an oratory, or a chapel. Fascinated by this hubbub, dozens of artists from every nation roam the classical ruins and new palaces in the heat and dust (!) drawing everything they see, prior to returning home to the grey northern skies.