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CARAVAGGIO: The Conversion of Paul

CARAVAGGIO: The Conversion of Paul. Looking at Acts 9. Conversione di San Paolo. The Conversion on the Way to Damascus is a masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio , painted in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo , in Rome .

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CARAVAGGIO: The Conversion of Paul

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  1. CARAVAGGIO: The Conversion of Paul Looking at Acts 9

  2. Conversione di San Paolo • The Conversion on the Way to Damascus is a masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, painted in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome. • The painting depicts the moment recounted in Chapter 9 of Acts of the Apostles when Saul, soon to be the apostle Paul, fell on the road to Damascus. He heard the Lord say "I am Jesus, whom you persecute, arise and go into the city.”

  3. Looking at the picture • On this canvas, Saul is an epileptic and fractured figure, flattened by the divine flash, flinging his arms upward in a funnel. • There are three figures in the painting. The commanding muscular horse dominates the canvas, yet it is oblivious to the divine light that defeated his rider's gravity. The aged groom is human, but gazes earthward, also ignorant of the moment of where God intervenes in human traffic.

  4. Only Saul, whose gravity and world has been overturned lies supine on the ground, but facing heaven, arms supplicating rescue. The groom can see his shuffling feet, and the horse can plod its hooves, measuring its steps; but both are blind to the miracle and way. They inhabit the unilluminated gloom of the upper canvas. • Saul, physically blinded by the event for three days, suddenly sees the Christian message. For once, his soul can hear the voice of Jesus, asking, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" His sword and his youthful sinews are powerless against this illuminating bolt of faith.

  5. This is not a pallid faith, with the sweet little cherubim of earlier work. The altarpiece is a world of an ascendant and joyous faith, bathed in refulgent daylight colours. Into a world fallen into dusk, faith is electroshock therapy etched in light. This is not a myth with multitudes of demigods, but a stark life-sized world of one horse and two men. One man has crashed with and now feels crushed by the lit universe. Caravaggio is painting at his peak of control and in his most enduring style.

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