The Ecstasy of Saint 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.
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About this painting
Three angels carry him upward; below, on a stone platform, he has left his book and his sword. Charles Le Brun, lecturing on the painting in 1671, read the angels as three states of grace — prevenient, cooperating, triumphant — and called the whole canvas silent theology.
Poussin painted it for the poet Paul Scarron, inventor of French burlesque — not for any church or altar. Below the rapture, classical architecture and a level landscape run out to the horizon, unmoved.
Le Brun read the sword as the blade of Paul's writings. No man may utter what he hears.
Sources: Musée du Louvre, 'Le Ravissement de saint Paul', INV 7288. · James Clifton, "The Limits of 'Mute Theology': Charles Le Brun's Lecture on Nicolas Poussin's Ecstasy of Saint Paul Revisited," in Quid est sacramentum? (Brill, 2019), pp. 580-605 · Commission by the poet Paul Scarron, inventor of French literary burlesque; painting executed in Rome 1649-1650; no ecclesiastical destination documented, painted for Scarron's private collection · Charles Le Brun, conférence of 10 January 1671, in 'The Limits of Mute Theology: Charles Le Brun's Lecture on Nicolas Poussin's Ecstasy of Saint Paul Revisited'. · II Corinthians 12:4, Douay-Rheims (Challoner).
That he was caught up into paradise and heard secret words which it is not granted to man to utter.
II Corinthians 12:4 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 9,655 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.