Conversion on the Way to Damascus

Saul has been hurled from his horse and lies sprawled on his back, arms thrown up toward a blinding light only he can see, while the great dappled horse and an old groom fill almost the whole canvas, oblivious. Caravaggio renders the conversion of the future Saint Paul (Acts 9) not as heavenly spectacle but as a private collapse in a stable yard, the miracle entirely interior. This is the accepted version, in the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome; his rejected first attempt at the subject is also in this collection.