Conversion on the Way to Damascus

The Conversion on the Way to Damascus, painted in 1600-1601, is one of two canvases Caravaggio created for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, the other being the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. The painting depicts the moment when Saul of Tarsus was struck down by divine light on the road to Damascus and converted to Christianity, becoming the apostle Paul. Caravaggio's radical interpretation shows the fallen Saul lying on the ground beneath his enormous horse, bathed in supernatural light — a shockingly intimate and physical treatment of a divine event. The painting remains in situ and is one of the masterpieces of Baroque art.

The composition is daringly unconventional, with the massive horse occupying most of the canvas and the prostrate Saul foreshortened beneath it, his arms outstretched in surrender to the divine light. The extreme chiaroscuro — Caravaggio's signature tenebrism — plunges most of the scene into darkness while the blinding light falls dramatically on Saul's body. The radical close-up perspective and the absence of any heavenly apparatus make the miraculous event startlingly physical and immediate.