Joseph Proetzner
St. Matthew

1753-55
Church of St. Peter, Munich, Germany

The saint is identified by the inscription below, which is good because the iconography is not helpful. St. Matthew is usually represented with a book, but so are hundreds of other saints. The other object he holds is a carpenter's square, which is properly the attribute of St. Thomas and not seen in other images of Matthew. It may be noted that the same sculptor also gave St. James the Less a felling saw, which properly belongs to St. Simon the Zealot. The object at his left foot could be modeled on the money bag that Matthew steps on in Rusconi's statue (circa 1708-18) in St. John Lateran.

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Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.