Conversione di san Paolo

In 1600 Caravaggio took on a commission for two pictures in a chapel of the Roman church of Santa Maria del Popolo. This crowded, brightly lit panel is his first attempt at one of them, Saul struck blind on the road to Damascus. Here he still fills the scene the older way, with a busy tangle of figures and Christ himself swooping down out of the sky on an angel's arm to reach toward the fallen man. It was rejected. Caravaggio painted the subject again, and that second version, still hanging in the chapel, throws nearly all of this out: no visible Christ, just a sprawled soldier, a huge horse, and a single shaft of light. This discarded first try passed into private hands and has stayed there ever since.