St. Matthew

The window depicts a full-length figure of a seated St. Matthew, leaning to the right, with his head slightly turned to the left. The Evangelist is shown holding a quill pen in his right hand, an inkwell in his left hand, and a large, blank open book, which will contain his Gospel, is spread over his lap. The saint’s right foot, which is restored, rests on top of a small shrine housing a leather money bag with gold coins, symbolic of the saint’s profession (a Roman publican, or tax collector) at the time of his conversion. Another money purse appears on the ground, at the side of the saint’s left foot. A painter, designer, and illustrator, Burne-Jones was close to the pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom he studied and subsequently developed a lasting friendship. Through his position with Morris & Company, founded by another good friend, William Morris, Burne-Jones participated in the revival of medieval-style applied arts. Burne-Jones designed the figure of St. Matthew in 1873 for Morris & Company’s commission for Jesus College Chapel in Cambridge. A decade after the designer’s death, Morris & Company produced another set of windows for the Cheadle Royal Hospital Chapel in Cheadle, near Manchester. Almost all of the windows for the Cheadle commission were made from Burne-Jones’s original designs of the 1870s, including this window with St. Matthew. Published in Albert Charles Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and His Circle: A Catalogue, 2 vv., New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 1975, v. 2, p. 49.

United Kingdom, England, Surrey, Merton Abbey

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