The story
Step into the small chapel in the left transept of Santa Maria del Popolo, beside the northern gate of Rome, and three paintings close in around you. On the side walls are Caravaggio's Conversion of Saint Paul and Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Above the altar is the Assumption of the Virgin by Annibale Carracci, the Bolognese painter who was then decorating the Farnese Palace. Two of the leading painters in Rome around 1600 share a space only a few steps wide.
The chapel belonged to Tiberio Cerasi, treasurer-general to Pope Clement VIII, who bought it in 1600 and signed Caravaggio's contract that September. Caravaggio's first versions, painted on cypress panels, were replaced by the canvases seen today, and Cerasi died in May 1601 before the work was finished. Because the chapel is narrow, both pictures are seen at a sharp angle from the entrance. In one, Saul lies thrown on his back beneath his horse. In the other, three labourers haul Peter's cross upright.
The church around this corner is far larger. Pope Sixtus IV rebuilt it in the 1470s, and its Chigi Chapel was designed by Raphael for the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi. Travellers arriving from the north entered the city through the Porta del Popolo, right beside the church door.
