by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
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Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio
A young man lies on the ground beneath a great horse. His arms open toward a light whose source the painting does not show as a person. The groom beside the animal appears occupied with the horse, while Saul, the future Saint Paul, experiences the event that redirects his life. Caravaggio makes a conversion legible through a fallen body and selective illumination rather than a crowd of heavenly figures.[1][2][3]
This is the final Conversion of Saint Paul in the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. It faces Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter across the chapel, with Annibale Carracci's Assumption of the Virgin at the altar. The earlier Odescalchi Conversion of Saint Paul is a separate panel in private ownership.[1][2]
Caravaggio in context
The Cardsharps
c.1595Calling of Saint Matthew
1599–1600Supper at Emmaus
1601At a Glance
- ArtistMichelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio (1571–1610)
- TitleConversion on the Way to Damascus, also The Conversion of Saint Paul or Conversion of Saul
- Dateabout 1601 in the Roma Capitale church record[1]
- Mediumoil on canvas[1]
- Size230 × 175 cm[5]
- LocationCerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome[1]
- CommissionTiberio Cerasi commissioned the pair of subjects in September 1600[1]
- National catalogue record1200182975, for the canvas in Santa Maria del Popolo[7]
- Key distinctionthis is the installed canvas with Paul, horse and groom; the earlier Odescalchi panel has a larger cast and visible Christ and angel[2]
Contents
- Which Version Is in the Chapel?
- When Was the Chapel Canvas Made and Installed?
- What Does the X-ray Show Beneath This Canvas?
- The Story from Acts
- Paul Beneath the Horse
- The Groom and the Unseen Voice
- Light, Space and the Chapel Setting
- What Other Painters Showed
- Darkness and the Experience of Blindness
- The First Odescalchi Version
- Frequently Asked Questions
Look closer: Conversion on the Way to Damascus
Paul lies below the horse, receiving light across his face and extended arms. The horse and groom make the divine event visible through ordinary bodies.
123Details from Conversion on the Way to Damascus
Select a detail image to open the full-size gallery, then use the arrows to compare views.
The horse’s flank
The horse fills the upper left and centre of the canvas, its warm flank becoming the painting’s largest lit form.
Paul’s open arms
Paul stretches both arms outward on the ground, creating a wide gesture beneath the horse.
The groom and bridle
The groom holds the horse at the right, his darker figure and careful hands stabilizing the scene.
Which Version Is in the Chapel?
The current Cerasi Chapel contains two Caravaggio canvases: Peter's crucifixion and Paul's conversion. The church's official Roma Capitale record places them on the chapel walls and dates them to around 1601. The paintings were commissioned for Tiberio Cerasi in September 1600; Carracci painted the central Assumption.[1]
There was an earlier pair of works for the same commission. The surviving first Conversion of Saul is now called the Odescalchi Altarpiece, an oil painting on a cypress panel. The Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini say those first pictures were never placed in the chapel and that the reasons remain under study. Caravaggio made new versions on canvas; the Conversion discussed here is one of them.[2]
Images online often use “Conversion of Saint Paul” for either painting. The composition is the reliable check. In the chapel canvas, a large horse dominates, Paul lies beneath it, and Christ is not visible as a figure. In the Odescalchi panel Christ and an angel appear amid a busier group, and the surface is brighter. A title alone cannot distinguish the two.[2]
When Was the Chapel Canvas Made and Installed?
The commission date, payment and installation date are three different points in the story. Cerasi bought the former Foscari chapel in July 1600 and engaged Carlo Maderno to remodel it, Annibale Carracci for the altar painting and Caravaggio for the two side pictures. Caravaggio's contract called for paintings on cypress panels. Cerasi died in May 1601 before the chapel was finished, leaving instructions that his heirs complete it according to Maderno's design.[6]
The heirs paid Caravaggio for two pictures in November 1601, though less than the contract price. The payment document calls them pictures without specifying whether they were panels or canvases; they remained in the artist's studio while the chapel was prepared. A carpenter was paid to place paintings in the chapel in spring 1605, and the chapel was consecrated in November 1606. Those records establish a sequence of payment and installation, but they do not prove that the canvas now on the wall was the work paid for in 1601.[6]
The church record and Smarthistory give the installed Conversion the conventional date of about 1601. Art historian Rossella Vodret proposes that Caravaggio may instead have painted the two replacement canvases as the chapel took shape between 1601 and 1605. She offers this as a hypothesis based on the documents and the way the canvases address the finished space, not as a newly discovered dated contract. The exact date of this canvas therefore remains open within that early period.[1][5][6]
Italy's national cultural-property catalogue assigns the installed canvas its own record, identifies its support as oil on canvas, and records a 1600–01 date. Its historical note gives the contract date, 24 September 1600, and a delivery date of 10 November 1601 after a reduced payment. That catalogue date is useful as the standard identification, but the entry does not resolve Vodret's question about which versions the 1601 transaction concerned. The record's subject terms—Paul, a male figure, horse and sword—also supply an unusually concise way of identifying the chapel picture without confusing it with the cypress panel.[7]
What Does the X-ray Show Beneath This Canvas?
The installed canvas has a technical history of its own. Vodret records its restoration in 1999, several years before the restoration of the separate Odescalchi panel. An examination reported in 2001 used radiography to look beneath the visible Conversion. A contemporary report credited Italy's ENEA with the X-ray work and described an earlier painted Saul who was older, armoured and less fully stretched out than the figure now seen. A later account, citing Claudia Viggiani's study of the chapel restoration, likewise describes an older Saul but says he was shielding his face from the light. The accounts agree on a substantial revision to the saint's figure; their extra details should not be silently combined into a single certain reconstruction.[6][13][14]
This earlier arrangement is under the paint of the installed canvas. It is distinct from the finished Odescalchi painting on cypress, which survives as a separate object. Calling the radiographic finding a “third version,” as the 2001 news report did, risks implying that another independent painting was found. The evidence instead shows Caravaggio changing the design of this canvas. It does not tell us when he made the alteration, who saw the earlier state, or whether a patron asked for the change. The news report's further suggestion of a second rejection is conjecture, not a documented event.[13][14]
The revision sharpens a visual question. In the final surface Paul is youthful, fully laid out and open-armed rather than apparently guarding his face. The painting makes his exposed body and receptive gesture the principal signs of the encounter. That contrast is an interpretation of the reported underlying figure and the visible painting, not a claim that radiography reveals Caravaggio's reason for revising it.[5][13]
The Story from Acts
Acts of the Apostles tells how Saul was travelling toward Damascus with authority to seize followers of Jesus. A light flashed around him; he fell to the ground and heard a voice ask why he was persecuting Christ. When he rose, he could not see, and his companions led him into the city. This reversal is the turning point that later makes Saul, known as Paul, an apostle.[3]
The blindness lasts three days in Acts 9, until Ananias comes to Saul and he regains his sight. Caravaggio stops before that recovery. Paul's closed eyes and the light across his body belong to the instant when seeing and understanding have come apart. The text describes the companions leading him onward, but the painting leaves that next action outside the frame. A viewer who knows the story can supply it while facing the still, exposed figure in the foreground.[3]
The text gives the light, fall, voice and companions. It does not say Saul rode a horse. Caravaggio's animal belongs to pictorial interpretation, not to a literal quotation from Acts. That distinction lets us ask why the painter gave the horse so much of the canvas. Its broad body creates a sheltering but precarious space above Paul, while the fallen man occupies the lower edge, close to the viewer.[3][4]
Acts returns to the episode when Paul tells his own story in chapter 22. There the companions see the light but do not hear the voice speaking to him; chapter 9 says they hear a sound but see no one. The two accounts therefore differ in how they describe what the companions perceived. The canvas does not attempt to settle that textual difference. Its single attendant stays with the horse while Paul's response marks him as the person addressed. Neither account names a groom or makes him an eyewitness who understands the revelation.[3][15]
The scene is a sudden interruption. Paul is no longer an armed traveller acting on his own purpose. He lies exposed and unable to see. His spread arms suggest receptivity, shock or surrender; any one word is an interpretation of the gesture rather than a scriptural label. The narrative is clear because the painted light and bodily response join the biblical story.[3]
Paul Beneath the Horse
The horse takes up a striking amount of the pictorial field. It is a real animal with mass, legs and a lowered head, not merely a small attribute to identify the journey. Paul's body lies on the ground below. That difference in scale can initially draw the viewer to the horse, but the youth's illuminated face, breast and open arms return attention to the person undergoing conversion.[4]
Caravaggio does not present Paul as a distant hero in a panoramic landscape. He is within reach at the picture's lower edge. His fall becomes a bodily experience a spectator can imagine: ground beneath his back, a horse standing overhead, the sudden loss of sight. Smarthistory's discussion of the Cerasi ensemble contrasts Caravaggio's close, dark side paintings with Carracci's brighter central Assumption.[4]
The animal is not shown trampling him. It stands while the groom attends to it. The danger of its size remains perceptible, but the image holds a quiet pause after the fall. The horse and handler carry on in ordinary physical space while Paul's experience is inward and extraordinary. This difference between visible activity and unseen revelation gives the picture much of its tension.[2][3]
Several small details make that pause feel unstable. One hoof is raised above the fallen man; Paul's helmet has come off, and his sword lies along the ground. Seen from the chapel, his body, the sword and the horse are all shortened by perspective, bringing them toward the spectator rather than arranging them in a distant procession. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker observe that the horse's heavy body puts the composition's visual weight high above the vulnerable Paul. The open arms at the bottom offer a second, quieter rhythm against that overhead mass.[5]
The Groom and the Unseen Voice
The groom is another human presence, but he does not become a second convert. His work is to manage the horse. Caravaggio gives him enough light to connect the animal and the fallen Paul, yet the compositional emphasis is on the figure on the ground. The painting does not map either account in Acts mechanically onto each painted figure; it uses an ordinary attendant to make the event seem to occur on a road among other people.[3][15]
Christ's voice is central to the scripture, yet the final canvas does not depict Christ's body. Light and Paul's response imply an encounter beyond what the other figures can see. This is a choice of representation, not evidence that the artist denied the story's religious content. The earlier Odescalchi panel makes the opposite pictorial choice, showing Christ and an angel directly.[2]
It is tempting to identify a single precise earthly source for the beam, or to infer a camera obscura from its effect. Neither follows from looking at the painted scene. Light here is a visible means of directing attention and signifying the event. Questions about the support, ground and working marks belong to the technique guide and to object-specific conservation studies.
Light, Space and the Chapel Setting
The background gives little sense of a long Damascus road. Horse, groom and Paul occupy a compressed dark space. The forms are large enough to meet a viewer close to the side wall. The composition's restraint also leaves room for the viewer to connect the physical scene to the voice described in Acts. There is no need for a painted crowd to explain why Paul has fallen.[2][3]
This chapel setting matters. The Conversion is not an isolated museum canvas. Across the narrow space is Peter's death, whose workers strain against a heavy cross. The two scenes move in different directions: Peter's body is lifted toward martyrdom, while Paul has fallen into the moment that begins his apostolic life. Their shared emphasis on the body gives the paired religious themes force from the spectator's position.[1][4]
Carracci's Assumption at the altar completes the arrangement. A visitor can first take in all three works and then turn to each side picture. Reproductions crop out the walls and the angled view, which can make Paul's horse seem merely oversized. In place, its near scale and the compressed figures answer the chapel's close sight lines.[1][4]
Vodret tested that relationship by comparing the restored Odescalchi panel directly with the installed painting in the chapel. In the canvas, Paul and the horse are larger, spaced farther apart and set in a shallower apparent depth. She suggests that these changes could suit a viewer who must look at a side wall from close range. That is a reasoned account of the visual effect, not proof that Caravaggio changed the design for this precise cause. The comparison nonetheless explains something a cropped reproduction cannot: the earlier panel invites a more distant view across a busier scene, while the final canvas presses its few figures into the visitor's space.[6]
What Other Painters Showed
The quiet of the Cerasi canvas becomes clearer beside earlier treatments of the same episode. In a sixteenth-century Milanese parade shield at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saul's horse has collapsed, soldiers react in fear, and a distant group leads the blinded traveller toward Damascus. One object thus shows both the shock and a later consequence of the journey. Caravaggio instead isolates the fallen man, one standing horse and its handler. The comparison concerns narrative choices; it does not establish that he saw this particular shield.[10]
Tintoretto's Conversion of Saint Paul, now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, uses a very different scale of event. Its museum catalogue describes many men and horses, flying banners, disturbed water and a broad landscape. Christ appears above the scene. In the Cerasi Chapel, the road and horizon have nearly disappeared, along with the army and visible heavenly figure. The same biblical interruption is made readable through Paul's body and the relation between light and darkness. This is a comparison of surviving works, not a claim that Tintoretto's painting served as Caravaggio's direct model.[8]
There was also a prominent Roman pairing before Cerasi's commission. Michelangelo painted a Conversion of Saint Paul and a Crucifixion of Saint Peter on the opposite side walls of the Vatican's Pauline Chapel in the 1540s. The Vatican Museums date the frescoes to 1542–45 and 1545–50. Cerasi's arrangement repeats the choice to face Paul's calling with Peter's martyrdom, though its paintings address a smaller chapel in a very different visual language. The parallel establishes an available Roman precedent for the paired subjects; the documents cited here do not show that Cerasi instructed Caravaggio to imitate it.[9]
Darkness and the Experience of Blindness
The canvas is sometimes explained simply as a dramatic spotlight. Yet the large unlit field matters as much as the light on Paul's chest and arms: the observer can see a body while the figure himself cannot see what has overtaken him. Art historian Tiffany A. Racco reads this conjunction of darkness and blindness through the tradition of negative theology, in which divine knowledge may be approached through the limits of ordinary sight. That is a proposed interpretation, not a documented statement of Caravaggio's intentions or a proven explanation of the revised commission.[3][11]
The stillness drew an adverse response from a later writer. Giovanni Pietro Bellori called the installed Conversion a story without action, as discussed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's study of Caravaggio and later Roman painting. What Bellori treated as a shortcoming can help a present viewer locate the chosen moment: the horse has stopped, the companions' onward journey has yet to begin, and the encounter is registered in Paul's body rather than in a visible clash. Bellori's judgment is evidence of reception, not proof that the picture failed its original devotional purpose.[12]
The First Odescalchi Version
The Odescalchi panel was painted for the original Cerasi commission and was not installed. It belongs to Nicoletta Odescalchi. Palazzo Barberini showed it temporarily in 2025 alongside a high-resolution reproduction of the church canvas. The exhibition account describes the earlier scene as lively, crowded and bright, the later as more essential in composition and stronger in inward feeling.[2]
Technical investigation of the panel found seven cypress planks, a light gray ground and several changes to Paul's face and other details. Those findings belong to the first version. They should not be transferred automatically to the canvas here. The panel's status as a finished commissioned painting also means it should not be called merely a sketch for the chapel work.[2]
The reason for the changed pair remains open. The first pictures were not placed in the chapel; Caravaggio made two new canvases. Beyond that sequence, a claim of simple rejection for indecency or a documented aesthetic objection would require evidence the current institutional account does not provide. The two versions are best compared through what they actually show.[2]
Giovanni Baglione's biography, published in 1642, says the first pictures did not please the patron and were taken by Cardinal Sannesio. Vodret notes that other seventeenth-century accounts do not repeat the rejection claim. Because Cerasi died before the chapel was completed, even the identity of the “patron” meant by that later report is uncertain: it might refer to Cerasi or to the hospital that inherited responsibility for the commission. Baglione is evidence that a rejection story circulated, but it does not settle why the first panels were replaced.[6]
Explore the Caravaggio collection
| Name | Date | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Adoration of the Shepherds by Caravaggio: The Messina Nativity | 1608–09; precise order relative to Resurrection of Lazarus remains unresolved | Artwork |
| Amor Victorious by Caravaggio | 1601–02 in the Berlin owner record | Artwork |
| Bacchus by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painting | about 1598, according to the Uffizi | Artwork |
| Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio | after 1597, probably around the turn of the seventeenth century, according to the Ambrosiana | Artwork |
| Boy Bitten by a Lizard: Caravaggio's London Painting | about 1594–95 in the National Gallery's current catalogue; URL suffix “1596” is inherited | Artwork |
| Boy Bitten by a Lizard: The Florence Version Attributed to Caravaggio | disputed; Longhi's catalogue record preserves historical 1592–93 and other proposed ranges, including c.1597 | Artwork |
| Boy Peeling Fruit by Caravaggio: The Royal Collection Painting | about 1592–93 in the owner's current exhibition record | Artwork |
| Boy Peeling Fruit in Florence: A Derivation from Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| Boy with a Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio | about 1595 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue | Artwork |
| Caravaggio Paintings in Rome: Churches, Museums and a Practical Route | — | Guide |
| Caravaggio Quotes: What the Documents Actually Record | — | Guide |
| Caravaggio's Lute Player: The Del Monte Painting Once Shown at the Met | about 1596–97 in the Met catalogue | Artwork |
| Caravaggio's Painting Technique: Grounds, Incisions, Revisions and Light | — | Guide |
| Christ at the Column by Caravaggio: The Rouen Flagellation | c.1606 in the owner caption; owner prose gives 1606–07 | Artwork |
| Christ on the Mount of Olives by Caravaggio: The Lost Berlin Painting | — | Artwork |
| Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio | about 1601 in the Roma Capitale church record | Artwork |
| Crowning with Thorns by Caravaggio: The Vienna Painting | about 1603 in the 2019 KHM record; “1607” is an inherited URL suffix | Artwork |
| Crowning with Thorns in Prato: Attributed to Caravaggio | about 1602–03 in the collection presentation | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Borghese Painting | 1606–07 or 1609–10 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue; the later Naples period is favoured by many scholars, while the owner keeps the question open | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Prado Painting | about 1600 in Prado material; “1599” survives only in the legacy URL | Artwork |
| David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio: The Vienna Painting | about 1600–01 in the KHM's 2019 exhibition record; “1607” is a legacy route label | Artwork |
| Did Caravaggio Make Drawings? What Survives and What Paintings Reveal | — | Guide |
| Ecce Homo: Caravaggio's Madrid Rediscovery and the Genoa Painting | — | Artwork |
| John the Baptist in Caravaggio's Paintings: A Guide to the Different Versions | — | Artwork |
| Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio | beginning of the seventeenth century in the owning museum's account; about 1599–1600 in the Kimbell's 2025 loan label; around 1602 in one specialist catalogue | Artwork |
| Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto: Caravaggio's Ludovisi Ceiling | about 1597; the archive connects the work with Cardinal del Monte's 1597 commission | Artwork |
| Madonna and Child with Saint Anne by Caravaggio: The Palafrenieri Altarpiece | 1605 in the Galleria Borghese object field; completed and delivered by 8 April 1606 | Artwork |
| Madonna of Loreto by Caravaggio: The Pilgrims at Sant'Agostino | broadly c.1604–06; institutional records differ slightly in their starting year | Artwork |
| Madonna of the Rosary by Caravaggio: The Vienna Altarpiece | around 1603 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum's object record | Artwork |
| Martha and Mary Magdalene by Caravaggio: The Detroit Painting | about 1598 in the Detroit Institute of Arts record | Artwork |
| Medusa by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painted Shield | 1596–98 in the Uffizi's virtual exhibition; specialist research reports the shield delivered to the Medici wardrobe by 7 September 1598 | Artwork |
| Narcissus, Attributed to Caravaggio | dependent on attribution; the Zeri catalogue gives a broad 1610–50 range under Spadarino | Artwork |
| Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence: Caravaggio's Missing Painting | somewhere in 1600–09 in the parliamentary report; a specific 1609 execution and place remain debated | Artwork |
| Penitent Mary Magdalene by Caravaggio | 1597 in the owner's catalogue, during Caravaggio's early Roman activity | Artwork |
| Portrait of a Courtesan: Caravaggio's Lost Berlin Portrait | Berlin's data field says c.1590, while its own text compares a Caravaggio work of c.1598; precise date unresolved | Artwork |
| Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and His Page by Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| Portrait of Fra Antonio Martelli? Caravaggio's Pitti Knight of Malta | 1608 in the Restituzioni object heading; within Caravaggio's Malta period | Artwork |
| Portrait of Maffeo Barberini: The Seated Corsini Painting | c.1596–97 in the national catalogue | Artwork |
| Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini: Caravaggio's Newly Acquired Painting | around the late 1590s / age thirty; “1598” in the inherited address is approximate, not an exact document date | Artwork |
| Portrait of Pope Paul V: A Caravaggio Attribution and a Borghese Copy | — | Artwork |
| Prints After Caravaggio: Who Made Them and What They Show | — | Guide |
| Reclining Saint John the Baptist: A Disputed Caravaggio Attribution | often proposed for the artist's final years; the later museum list does not give a precise year. | Artwork |
| Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Caravaggio | about 1597 in the owner's catalogue | Artwork |
| Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio: The Thyssen Painting | about 1598–99 in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza catalogue | Artwork |
| Saint Francis in Meditation by Caravaggio: The Cremona Painting | 1603–06 in the owner account; c.1605–06 in a KHM exhibition caption | Artwork |
| Saint Francis in Prayer: Caravaggio's Carpineto Painting | 1606 in a 2016–17 exhibition work list | Artwork |
| Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy by Caravaggio | c.1595–96 in the owner wall text | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome in Meditation: Caravaggio's Montserrat Painting | 1605 in the owner record; an owner publication reports scholarship placing it about 1605–06 | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio: The Borghese Painting | c.1606 in the owner catalogue; the “1605” URL suffix is inherited | Artwork |
| Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio: The Malta Painting | around 1607–08; foundation dates Malaspina's commission to 1608 | Artwork |
| Saint John in the Wilderness at Toledo Cathedral | exact 1598 not established by the cited cathedral account. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at Galleria Corsini, Rome | about 1606 in the national record; older proposals ranged from the late 1590s onward. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Capitoline Museums, Rome | 1602. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Galleria Borghese | 1609–10 in the current Borghese record. | Artwork |
| Saint John the Baptist at the Spring: The Bonello Painting in Malta | early seventeenth century in the institutional account; a precise 1608 is not established there. | Artwork |
| Saint Matthew and the Angel: Caravaggio's Lost First Altarpiece | — | Artwork |
| Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist: Caravaggio's London Painting | about 1609–10, likely late Naples period in the Gallery's account | Artwork |
| Salome with the Head of John the Baptist: Caravaggio's Madrid Painting | — | Artwork |
| Sleeping Cupid by Caravaggio: The Painting Made in Malta | about 1608, Malta period | Artwork |
| Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge: Is It by Caravaggio? | — | Artwork |
| Supper at Emmaus (1606): Caravaggio's Brera Painting | — | Artwork |
| The Annunciation by Caravaggio in Nancy | c.1607–10 in the collection record; 1608–10 in the museum's restoration account | Artwork |
| The Basel Saint John the Baptist: Once Labelled Caravaggio, Now Maíno | about 1608–10 in that schedule, rather than the legacy URL's 1600. | Artwork |
| The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio | about 1608; installed in the Oratory on 29 August 1608 | Artwork |
| The Burial of Saint Lucy by Caravaggio in Syracuse | 1608, during Caravaggio's Syracuse stay | Artwork |
| The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | about 1599–1600 | Artwork |
| The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew by Caravaggio | about 1602–04 in the Trust's object text | Artwork |
| The Cardsharps by Caravaggio | about 1596–97 in the Kimbell's current object record | Artwork |
| The Conversion of Saint Paul: Caravaggio's Odescalchi Panel | commissioned in 1600; painted around 1600–01 | Artwork |
| The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew by Caravaggio | 1606–07 | Artwork |
| The Crucifixion of Saint Peter by Caravaggio | about 1601 | Artwork |
| The Death of the Virgin by Caravaggio | commissioned 1601; completed late 1605 or early 1606, according to the Louvre | Artwork |
| The Denial of Saint Peter by Caravaggio | 1610 | Artwork |
| The Doria Pamphilj Saint John the Baptist: A Second Youth with a Ram | linked compositionally to the Capitoline 1602 picture; an exact production year for this canvas is not established by the owner pages used here. | Artwork |
| The Entombment of Christ by Caravaggio: The Vatican Deposition | about 1600–04 in Vatican Museums publication material | Artwork |
| The Flagellation of Christ by Caravaggio: The Capodimonte Altarpiece | around 1607, in the first Naples period | Artwork |
| The Fortune Teller by Caravaggio: The Louvre Version and Its Roman Counterpart | — | Artwork |
| The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio | early 1600s in the Met catalogue; no more exact owner date asserted here | Artwork |
| The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio | about 1601 in the SPSG presentation | Artwork |
| The Inspiration of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | usually 1602; also catalogued 1602–03, for the installed final altarpiece | Artwork |
| The Lute Player by Caravaggio: The Hermitage Painting | about 1596 in the Hermitage collection publication; the Hermitage Friends restoration page gives about 1595–96 | Artwork |
| The Magdalen in Ecstasy: Caravaggio, Copies and a Disputed Original | — | Artwork |
| The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio | 1599–1600; unveiled with The Calling in 1600 | Artwork |
| The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula by Caravaggio | — | Artwork |
| The Musicians by Caravaggio | 1597 | Artwork |
| The Resurrection of Lazarus by Caravaggio in Messina | 1609; delivered 10 June 1609 in the owner account | Artwork |
| The Sacrifice of Isaac by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi: A Former Caravaggio Attribution | about 1615–17 in the Nicholas Hall catalogue; “1598” is an inherited URL label, not the accepted date | Artwork |
| The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio: The Uffizi Painting | about 1603 in the Uffizi catalogue | Artwork |
| The Seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio | 1606–07, according to the Pio Monte | Artwork |
| The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio: The London Painting | 1601 | Artwork |
| The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio | 1602 | Artwork |
| The Toulouse *Judith Beheading Holofernes*: A Caravaggio Attribution Debate | c.1606–07 if identified with the recorded Naples work; that identification is debated | Artwork |
| Young Sick Bacchus by Caravaggio | about 1595 in the Galleria Borghese catalogue | Artwork |
| Youth with a Ram: Why Caravaggio's Saint John Looks So Unusual | — | Artwork |
No matching pages found.
Discussion
Share a close observation about Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio or a source that clarifies its history.
Which detail changes your reading?
Is there a collection record or document worth comparing?
What remains uncertain?
Join the Conversation
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Conversion on the Way to Damascus?
It remains in the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, opposite Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter.[1]
Why does the horse fill so much of the picture?
Does the Bible say Paul fell from a horse?
Acts 9 describes a light, a fall to the ground and a voice; it does not mention a horse. The animal is an artistic addition to the visual tradition.[3]
Is Christ shown in the painting?
Christ is not depicted as a visible figure in the final chapel canvas. His presence is conveyed through the light and Paul's response. Christ and an angel are visible in the earlier Odescalchi panel.[2]
References
- Roma Capitale, Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo and the Cerasi Chapel.
- Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini, Conversion of Saul, two versions and technical account.
- The Holy See, New American Bible, Acts of the Apostles 9.
- Smarthistory, “Baroque art, an introduction,” Cerasi Chapel arrangement.
- Smarthistory, Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, “Caravaggio, The Conversion of St. Paul (or The Conversion of Saul)”.
- Rossella Vodret, “L’enigma del Caravaggio Odescalchi: Le due versioni della Conversione di San Paolo a confronto”.
- Italian national cultural-property catalogue, Conversione di san Paolo, record 1200182975.
- National Gallery of Art, Robert Echols, catalogue entry for Tintoretto's Conversion of Saint Paul.
- Vatican Museums, guide to Michelangelo's frescoes in the Pauline Chapel.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, Parade Shield Depicting the Conversion of Saint Paul.
- Tiffany A. Racco, “Darkness in a Positive Light,” Artibus et Historiae 73 (2016), abstract.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio, “Painting from Life”.
- Andrea Bardi, “La cappella Cerasi in Santa Maria del Popolo,” citing Claudia Viggiani, “La cappella Cerasi” (2009), p. 528, on the radiography.
- Exibart, “Una nuova Conversione di San Paolo,” contemporary report of the ENEA X-ray examination, 4 December 2001.
- The Holy See, New American Bible, Acts of the Apostles 22.
- Annotated image source: Wikimedia Commons, File:Caravaggio-The Conversion on the Way to Damascus.jpg, high-resolution reproduction used for the annotated details.
