The Conversion of Saul

Saul possessed Roman citizenship, a right granted by Julius Caesar to the citizens of Tarsus. His conversion is a historical event of far-reaching importance to Christianity owing to the role he played in its spread and the testimony he bore to the resurrection of Christ with his life and death.

The persecutor of the early church, armed as a Roman legionary, has fallen off the horse he was riding on his way to Damascus, blinded temporarily by a divine vision when he hears the voice of Christ, who appears on high in a parting of the clouds: ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9: 1−7). The group of companions on the right gaze at the happening in amazement, while two men try to calm their runaway horses in the middle distance. 

Borders: Allegories of the arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium are depicted beneath each other in the mirror-symmetrical side borders: Geometry with a pair of compasses; Music with a viola; Astronomy with the celestial sphere; and Arithmetic with sums and figures on a tablet. The centre of the lower border displays a reference to the Garden of the Hesperides with its beautiful tree of golden apples and the watchful dragon chained to the trunk, a symbol of immortality in classical mythology. The tree is flanked by allegories of the virtues Prudence, Temperance, Charity and Faith.

Texts: Concha Herrero Carretero