Conversion of Saul

Tisi Benvenuto called Garofalo

(Garofalo or Ferrara 1476 - Ferrara 1559)

This painting was documented in the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1622. The composition of the work is divided into three clear zones. The jumble of figures seems to plunge towards the foreground where is Saul, isolated on his horse.  The types of figures and their poses seem largely drawn from the repertoire of Roman Mannerism and in particular the grandiose language developed by Giulio Romano.

Object details

Commentary

This Conversion of Saul has a secure date, thanks to an inscription on a rock at lower left that gives the year MDXXXXV and a document relative to restoration work in 1622 that cost six scudi (Tarissi de Jacobis 2002), which also establishes that the painting was in the Borghese Collection in the 1620s.

The monumental size of the work suggests that it was painted for a church, although the documents and sources have not yet revealed its provenance or patron.

As observed by Alessandra Pattanaro (1995), it is astonishing that the painting was not considered fundamental for the reconstruction of Garofalo’s catalogue, in part and most importantly for the strong influence of Michelangelo, the composition of this painting clearly echoing Buonarroti’s fresco of the same subject in the Pauline Chapel and the way the handling of musculature echoes the nudes in the Last Judgement. The dramatic tangle of bodies deriving from the Sistine frescoes intertwines with another fundamental component of Garofalo’s style: study of Giulio Romano, represented here by the tragic monumentality of the sculptural figures arranged illusionistically along diagonals, recalling the solutions adopted by Raphael’s student for the frescoes in the Hall of the Giants in Palazzo Te, Mantua.

The composition is basically divided into two planes, as laid down by Raphael. In the upper register, the heavenly sphere, Christ appears among the clouds accompanied by an angel. Below, the monumental body of Saul stands out amidst the dramatic confusion of soldiers and horses, about to fall, blinded, from his white charger, which has already been partially brought down by the divine force.

The restorers used the work to experiment with transferring a painting from panel to canvas, in view of applying the method to Raphael’s Deposition (inv. 369). The results of this experimentation were poor, and so Raphael’s work was spared, whereas Garofalo’s altarpiece remains as tangible evidence of why.

Lara Scanu