The Conversion of St Paul
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Acts never mentions a horse. Caravaggio gives the animal most of the canvas and puts the apostle on his back underneath it, arms open, eyes shut — the greatest moment of his life allotted less room than a horse's flank.
There is no Christ in it. Only light, from a source he refuses to show. Acts shows no more: the companions heard a voice but saw no man, and Saul's opened eyes saw nothing. The light is the whole apparition.
It hangs where it was painted, and you see it from the side.
Sources: the Cerasi Chapel, commissioned from Caravaggio in September 1600 by Tiberio Cerasi, with Annibale Carracci's Assumption on the altar; the basilica is held by the Augustinians · Acts 9:3–9, 22:6–11 and 26:12–18; and Halvor Moxnes, ‘Where Did the Horse Come From? Caravaggio and Paul's Conversion as a Bodily Experience’, in Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023), 227–244. DOI 10.1515/9780228017721-016 · Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti (Rome, 1642), Life of Caravaggio · Leo Steinberg, ‘Observations in the Cerasi Chapel’, The Art Bulletin 41, no. 2 (1959), 183–190. DOI 10.1080/00043079.1959.11408594 · Acts 9:3-8, Douay-Rheims (Challoner). · Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, 'Caravaggio, The Conversion of St Paul', Smarthistory.
And falling on the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
Acts 9:4 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 12,900 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.