The Conversion of Saint Paul

CC0 Public Domain Designation

Prints and Drawings

1554

Giorgio Vasari
Italian, 1511–1574

This lively sketch is a preparatory drawing for one of three 1555 frescoes that Vasari painted for a church ceiling vault in the central Italian town of Cortona. The artist’s line, rapidly applied in pen and ink, belies the careful thought given to the composition, in which Vasari makes utmost use of the scene’s horizontal format.

The paint stains on the drawing’s right side indicate that this was a working drawing used in the painting process.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Giorgio Vasari
Title: The Conversion of Saint Paul
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1554
Medium: Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, with splatters of gray, green and pink paint over black chalk, squared in black chalk, on cream laid paper, with framing lines in pen and brown ink, laid down on secondary paper
Inscriptions: None
Dimensions: 18.2 × 26.7 cm (7 3/16 × 10 9/16 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
Reference Number: 2019.872
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/244912/manifest.json

Florian Härb, The Drawings of Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2015, p. 483, no. 312 (ill.).

New York, W. M. Brady and Co., “Old Master and 19th-Century Drawings,” 2015, no. 2.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection”, January 25 - May 10, 2020, pp. 28-29, cat. 7, p. 131. GC 12, traveled to New York, The Morgan Library, February 19 - June 6, 2021, and Berkeley CA, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, August 4 - November 28, 2021.

Private collection, Paris; sold, Sotheby’s, London, July 9, 2014, lot 14. W. M. Brady and Co., New York, by 2015 [Härb 2015]; sold to the Gray Collection Trust, Chicago, June 6, 2017; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.