The Conversion of Saint Paul

Saul was on the road to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus when, as the Acts of the Apostles tell it, a light from heaven threw him to the ground and a voice asked why he was persecuting him. He got up blind, and three days later, baptised, he began his life as the apostle Paul.

The museum calls this version eccentric and highly original. Its figures are sophisticated, with broad declamatory gestures and fancifully Eastern costumes, set before a city it describes as utterly metaphysical. More than other pictures, the museum says, it recalls what painters of the Po valley still remembered around 1500 of Piero della Francesca, the Tuscan master of still, geometric figures. The label names no painter for certain. It says Venetian painter, then adds Bernardo Parentino, an artist from Istria who worked in Padua and Mantua, followed by a question mark.