It was also Sunday, September 24, 1600, the day when Caravaggio received the commission to represent both The Conversion of Saint Paul and the Crucifixion of Peter. The two paintings, completed between the end of 1600 and 1601, are an important testimony to the realism that characterizes his works. In Conversion, Saul is struck on the Damascus road in a totally unusual way.  The divine icon is absent except for the light that blinds Saint Paul and illuminates the scene creating a completely different atmosphere from some manneristic representations: there is no Christ figure and the episode seems more as a portrait in its human dimension than as an divine act. While welcoming the possible inference of the commissioner, Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi, the choice of Caravaggio remains distinctive, moving away from the previous tradition.

The work replaced the first version of the still manieristic matrix, becoming subject to numerous interpretations which fed the myth of the nonconformist painter who’s constantly unwilling to respect the rules. This replacement invites us to reflect on why Caravaggio has made a second version of the painting? The most acclaimed hypothesis – based on a statement by Giovanni Baglione, the historical enemy of Caravaggio – is that the first version on the table was rejected by the client. On the other hand, the explanation of this drastic change could be a mere adaptation to the spaces destined for his paintings, as he always remembers the observer and the effect that the work should have aroused with the intention of canceling the barrier between painted and real space.

This canvas was also the subject of multiple discussions and interpretations, having, as the main protagonist, the horse (indeed his derrière) instead of the saint. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, a painter of Mannerism, in his treatise on art of painting, states that: “In religious places the façades and tables must be placed in a way that conforms to the nobility of the eyes, as it would be said that the hindquarters of horses, and other animals, are not to be seen in front, but behind, as a part unworthy of being seen, and therefore they need to show the face, and leave the parts that can offend his eyes back “; it is easy to guess how The Conversion could be indecent.

The work, however, must be contextualized both in the landscape of those days, marked by profound changes in the Catholic Church as well as in today’s, where it is still possible to admire it in the chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The message reflected by this historical contextualization gives us a profoundly different meaning of Caravaggio’s art: far from indecent, Merisi is considered a revolutionary artist made famous by the intense naturalism of his subjects and the use of ‘shining light’.

This technique links Caravaggio’s art to photography and cinema and Тhe Conversion of St. Paul to a particular director: Sergio Leone. Coincidence wants Oscar-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci to compliment his colleague of western spaghetti for the way he reared horses: “I said I liked the way he was filming the asses of the horses. In general, both Italian and German westerns, the horses were taken up  front and side by side – in profile. But when you film them, I told him, you always show their backs; a chorus of backs. There are few directors who take the back, which is less rhetorical and romantic. One is John Ford. The other is you. ”

Caravaggio,
The Conversion of Saint Paul,
1600/1601,
Oil on canvas,
230x175cm,
Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo