Conversion on the Way to Damascus

The most audacious composition in Baroque painting: the largest figure is the horse. Saul is on his back on the ground, arms flung up, blinded by a light that comes from nowhere and everywhere. His elderly servant is calming the horse, oblivious to the miracle happening at his feet. The absence of Christ, the earthy realism of the horse's dappled flank, the compression of the composition into vertical space — all radical.