In this painting, Saint Paul the Apostle (c. A.D 5-c A.D 67), one of the most influential early Christian missionaries and leaders, is sitting quietly at his desk, writing one of his epistles (letters). He holds a pen ready in his right hand and gazes at a script, pausing in a moment of reflection. This painting is rich with symbols: the rolled scroll, cards, books, and loose scripts that surround him, and the sword, biblically associated with the word of god, at his left.
The softness of this painting lends a sense of intimacy and quiet reflection. The fold of his cloak, his delicately painted scholar’s hands, and the curves of the scroll and the book express a meditative air. The artist paints light realistically, forming a vital part of this composition. Notice how the light falls on his bald head, the table, and the sword. The striking contrast between light and shadow, together with the simplicity of the half-length figure, reveal the artist’s influence by Caravaggio, whose radical paintings depicting strong contrast between light and dark were enormously influential in the early 17th century.
The artist carefully balanced the composition of the painting through the use of the red cloak, adding color and drama in the right side of the painting leaving the left side shrouded in black haze. This is a technique used to draw the viewer’s attention to an object of interest.
In the center of the painting, viewers can see a reflection of a face on the table. At first glance, it seems to be a reflection of Paul or perhaps because the figure is pictured with a crown of thorns, the head of Christ. Look carefully and it becomes clear something is not quite right. The angle of the reflection does not align with the face, nor is the light source correctly placed to be casting such a reflection. It appears that the face was part of a previous composition that the artist painted over. This was a common practice, since canvas was expensive. When an artist deemed a painting unsuccessful, they often painted over the existing image and started anew.
Through X-radiographs, scholars have concluded that there are actually three compositions layered on top of each other on this canvas. The first painting, vertical in orientation, showed an artist at his easel. This figure was painted over with an image of Christ crowned with thorns. The shadowy, upside down image that you see here in the table survived from that second painting. X-radiographs indicate that the bottom layer of paint shows an artist at his easel, possibly making that earlier version a self-portrait. It is interesting that time, and modern technology, has revealed the artist’s earlier paintings that were never intended to be part of the final version.
