Conversion On The Road To Damascus: Painting Analysis

Art has played an important role in human history, from cave paintings to masterpieces on the ceiling. They have displayed emotions, shown victories and defeats, as well as boasted major events. There are multiple paintings that display events during Paul`s life. Three major paintings that have shown important events during Paul`s life are; the Vision of Cornelius, the Death of Ananias, The Conversion on the Road to Damascus. They all display prominent events in Christian history.
Eeckhout uses methods that his teacher Rembrandt van Rijn taught him in the late 1630s. Eeckhout used them until the end of his painting career. The main aspects of these techniques is the use of sensational play of light and shadows to add a dramatic charge to the depiction of an event. These techniques arevery effective for contacts between humans and divine beings; here the contact is the appearance of an angle to the Roman centurion Cornelius. During their contact the angel tells Cornelius to seek out
The most stunning painting is of Paul on the road to Damascus. According to the book of Acts, on the way to Damascus, Saul the Pharisee fell to the ground when he heard the voice of Christ saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' Saul then temporarily lost his sight. It was reasonable to assume that Saul had fallen from a horse as he was a man of importance. Caravaggio paintings were very close to what the Bible describes. The horse is there and, to hold him, a groom, but the drama is internalized within the mind of Saul. He lies on the ground, stunned, his eyes closed as if dazzled by the brightness of God's light that streams down the white part of the skewbald horse, but that the light is heavenly is clear only to the believer, for Saul has no halo. In the spirit of Luke, Caravaggio makes religious experience look