La conversión de san Pablo

Juan Bautista Maino learned to paint in Rome, in the years just after Caravaggio had turned Italian painting toward harsh light and ordinary bodies, and he carried that lesson home to Spain. He made this Conversion of Saint Paul around 1614, the moment on the road to Damascus when a persecutor is thrown from his horse and blinded by a light he cannot place. Soon after, Maino gave up a busy career, entered a Dominican monastery in Toledo, and later taught drawing to the young prince who would become Philip IV. He painted little once he took his vows, so few works remain. This one was badly burned in a fire in 1985 and only firmly linked to his name in 2011.