Imaginary view of Antwerp with scenes from the life of Saint Matthew

The landscapes painted by the artists of the Low Countries in the 16th century often have an artificial appearance, belying a composition trend based on assembling disparate details, some observed in nature, some imaginary. This painting is one of the most surprising examples. In the background, one can make out the Antwerp roadstead as it looked from the left bank of the River Scheldt. The copy is only approximately faithful to the original, but it allows us to pick out several of the main buildings which dot the town panorama, from the Burchtkerk on the left to Saint-Michel on the right. In the centre we can see Notre-Dame sticking up. Despite its great height, it is not the spire that dominates the landscape, but the implausible rocky peaks that stand out from the mountain ridge. The palms which decorate the foreground are no less incongruous. These motifs give the Scheldt landscape a dreamlike strangeness which may be a symbolic with the iconography of the painting. Unfortunately, any such symbolism is largely unclear to us today. We can, of course, identify Saint Matthew unwilling to leave his opulent lodging to answer Christ's call. He is seen as greed incarnate. Identifying the other characters is more difficult, however. Christ, scaling a barrier and pointing his finger to a member of the cavalry juxtaposes the road of sin and that of salvation, which also showing that the latter is littered with pitfalls and necessitates sacrifice. This explanation, however right or wrong, fails to explain several details, like the two storks which capture ones attention due to their predominant position in the foreground. Dominique Allart in "Le peintre et l'arpenteur" [The Painter and The Surveyor])