A story of light and darkness

The Conversion of St Paul on the Road to Damascus, 1600 By Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

By Caroline Shaw

On June 29 we celebrate the great feast of SS Peter and Paul. Caravaggio’s paintings of the Conversion of St Paul and the Martyrdom of St Peter are two of the most powerful depictions of these events in art history, and will be well known to anyone who has ever made a pilgrimage to Rome. The church in which they hang, the great Augustinian church of Santa Maria del Popolo, lies at the northern edge of Rome and traditionally formed the start of one of the principal pilgrimage routes through the city.

The story of the conversion of St Paul is described in the Acts of the Apostles. St Paul also refers to his conversion in the Epistle to the Galatians, which is read on the feast of the Commemoration of St Paul on June 30. In this letter, St Paul talks of the time before his conversion, when he was Saul, the great persecutor: “you have heard of my conversion in time past in the Jews’ religion: how that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God and wasted it.” In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that Saul was on his way to Damascus with the express intention of finding Christians in order to capture and return them in chains to Jerusalem. As he drew near to Damascus, “suddenly a light from Heaven shone round about him. And falling on the ground he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?’ Who said, ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, Whom thou persecutest.” When Saul eventually stood up and opened his eyes, he found that he was completely blind. He was led to Damascus, “and he was there three days without sight; and he did neither eat nor drink.”

Unlike most paintings, in which the main subject is placed at the centre of the composition, Caravaggio has filled the majority of the canvas with the huge body of Saul’s horse – a solid, heavy patient workhorse, who steps carefully to avoid trampling on his master. The very centre of the painting is the shadow below the horse’s front leg, and since this is clearly not the most important element of the painting, we are at first a little disorientated. We do not have the usual markers that help us to navigate the composition, and it takes time to understand what we are looking at. Gradually our eye becomes acclimatised to the shadows and light, to the strange angle of Saul’s outstretched body, the tangle of limbs – hands, hoofs, fingers, feet – and the crumpled streams of red drapery, lying like the pools of Christian blood he had hoped to shed.

Conversion of St Paul on the Road to Damascus by Caravaggio (1600).

This is a story of light and darkness, and Caravaggio has painted it with characteristic drama. Lost in the shadows of evil, ignorance and pride, the man who was Saul the persecutor has been struck off his horse and blinded. He falls to the ground, bathed in the clear, intense light of God. In this moment of ecstatic vision, divine light enters him and pervades him entirely. We are watching an extremely intimate moment. It is clear that, although his body is lying crumpled on the road, his mind and his soul are elsewhere. His eyes can no longer see what is around him, but he sees vast expanses with the interior light of truth and faith. This is not merely a vision, but a complete conversion. His soul, once dark with hatred, is at this moment being washed clean with God’s love. All his preoccupations and prejudices are being stripped away, and faith, hope and charity are being fused into the very depths of his being. We cannot help but wonder what he sees with his blinded eyes. What does he hear? Tradition tells us that for the three days during which he remained blind, Paul was taught the Gospels by Our Lord Himself, for he wrote that he did not receive this knowledge from a man, but through divine revelation.

Caravaggio has arranged the scene so that Paul is in the most vulnerable position possible – lying prone on the ground, exposed to the weight of an enormous horse, his helmet and sword unused and discarded next to him. His arms are outstretched in a gesture of trust, invitation and acceptance: Paul embraces the light of God just as a small baby innocently and imploringly stretches out his arms for his mother. All his pride is gone, as is all his worldly power. The great zealot has fallen from his ‘high horse’ and his world has been turned upside down. As St Augustine wrote of this event: “the wolf was crushed and became a lamb; the persecutor was crushed and became the preacher; the son of perdition was crushed to be brought erect as the vessel of election.” Meanwhile, his horse waits calmly, gazing down at his master. He is held steady by the servant who, we are told, was amazed, “hearing indeed a voice, but seeing no man”. Although the old man can little have understood what was happening, he also seems to be deep in contemplation, and is perhaps undergoing his own conversion.

Caravaggio’s patron, Tiberio Cerasi, was a wealthy lawyer and member of the Papal treasury, and he purchased the chapel and commissioned Caravaggio in 1600. This was to be Cerasi’s burial place, and in fact he died before the works had been finished, but his choice of subject matter for the two paintings – one representing bodily death on the cross, the other representing a mystical death and re-birth on the road to Damascus – were most fitting for a burial chapel. As we contemplate this dramatic scene of conversion, we may profitably call to mind St Paul’s own words in the Epistle to the Romans, which provide perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the grace, understanding and above all, love that was ignited in his soul that fateful day: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”