What comes first in the title

Word order in a recorded title is a ranking. Here the landscape is named first and the two figures follow, which inverts the arrangement of every other Matthew entry in this catalogue. Eight titles here name Matthew, and this is the only one that opens with a setting rather than a person. The angel arrives third in a list of three.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1645 and gives Nicolas Poussin, filed as French. It measures 99 x 135 cm, horizontal. The measured colour family is ochre. No location is recorded for this entry, so no collection is named here. The subject fields file the work under landscape, rural and river as well as religion — the only one of the Matthew entries here to carry landscape categories at all. The record supplies no style term, which is unusual; most works on this site carry at least one.

The angel that is not one

Matthew's companion is his evangelist symbol, drawn from the four living creatures, and the tradition winged the human one until it looked like a member of the host. It is not: it belongs to no order, carries no message, and exists only in relation to the man beside it. Sixteen titles here name an archangel, and those figures have names, offices and adversaries. Matthew's angel has a book to dictate and nowhere else to be — which is precisely why it can be pushed to the edge of a landscape without losing its function.