Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2018 The hidden language of art: symbol and allusion Rebirth in Caravaggio’s Conversion of St Paul Michael Hill 21 and 22 March 2018 Lecture summary: This lecture examines Caravaggio’s Conversion of St Paul as a profound reflection on the theme of blindness as a gateway to spiritual renewal. The painting depicts the moment Paul, the future author of the Greek epistles that comprise the bulk of the New Testament, is blinded by the light of Christ. Luke tells the story in the Acts of the Apostles (22: 5-11. The Conversion is a pendent to the Crucifixion of St Peter on the facing wall, which shows an upside down Peter being raised atop the Janiculum. Both paintings are fictively lit by a Dove of the Holy Spirit painted on the barrel vault of the antechamber and both are witnessed obliquely by devotees from directly underneath this vault. The two paintings, heavy with the darkness of the fallen world, contrast – deliberately, one would think - with the bright, ideal, and Heaven-bound figures of the chapel’s altarpiece, The Assumption of the Virgin , by Annibale Carracci as a component of the same commission Slide list: 1. Caravaggio, Conversion of St Paul, Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome,1600 2. Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St Peter, Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, 1600 3. Annibale Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin, Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, 1601 1. Caravaggio, Conversion of St Paul (rejected), Odelscalchi Coll, Rome, 1600 2. Caravaggio, Inspiration of St Matthew (rejected), Lost, 1602 3. Caravaggio, Inspiration of St Matthew, Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome,1602 4. Caravaggio, Penitent Magdalen, Gall Doria Pamphili, 1595 5. Caravaggio, Ecstasy of St Francis,1595 6. Pinturicchio, Adoration of the Christ Child, Delle Rovere Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, 1490 Reference: Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio , Phaidon: London, 2000 . Proudly sponsored by .