6. St. Paul disputes with the Jews. His attitude is vehement and expressive: three Jewish doctors stand before him as if confounded and put to silence by his eloquent reasoning.
7. St. Paul escapes from Damascus; the basket, in which he is lowered down from a parapet, is about the size of a hand-basket.
8. St. Paul delivers a scroll to Timothy and Silas; he consigns to their direction the deacons that were ordained by the apostles and elders. (Acts xvi. 4.)
9. St. Paul and St. Peter meet at Rome, and embrace with brotherly affection. I believe this subject to represent the reconciliation of the two apostles after the dispute at Antioch. The inscription is, Hic Paulus venit Romam et pacem fecit cum Petro. (In the Christian Museum in the Vatican there is a most beautiful small Greek picture in which Peter and Paul are embracing; it may represent the reconciliation or the parting: the heads, though minute, are extremely characteristic.)
10. The decollation of St. Paul at the Aqua Salvias; one fountain only is introduced.
This is the earliest instance I can quote of the dramatic treatment of the life and actions of St. Paul in a series of subjects. The Greek type of the head of St. Paul is retained throughout, strongly individualised, and he appears as a man of about thirty-five or forty. In the later schools of art, which afford some celebrated examples of the life of St. Paul treated as a series, the Greek type has been abandoned.
The series by Raphael, executed for the tapestries of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, consists of five large and seven small compositions.
1. The conversion of Saul, already described: the cartoon is lost. 2. Elymas the sorcerer struck blind: wonderful for dramatic power. 3. St. Paul and Barnabas at Lystra. 4. Paul preaches at Athens. Of these three magnificent compositions we have the cartoons at Hampton Court. 5. St. Paul in prison at Philippi. The earthquake through which he was liberated is here represented allegorically as a Titan in the lower corner of the picture, with shoulders and arms heaving up the earth. This, which strikes us as rather pagan in conception, has, however, a parallel in the earliest Christian Art, where, in the baptism of Christ, the Jordan is sometimes represented by a classical river-god, sedge-crowned, and leaning on his urn.
The seven small subjects, which in the set of tapestries run underneath as borders to the large compositions, are thus arranged:—
1. ‘As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.’ (Acts viii. 3.) At one end of a long narrow composition Saul is seated in the dress of a Roman warrior, and attended by a lictor; they bring before him a Christian youth; farther on are seen soldiers ‘haling men and women’ by the hair; others flee in terror. This was erroneously supposed to represent the massacre at Prato, in 1512, by the adherents of the Medici, and is so inscribed in the set of engravings by Bartoli and Landon.