The Conversion of Saint Paul

The Conversion of Saint Paul — Giorgio Vasari. 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. Dimensions: 18.2 × 26.7 cm (7 3/16 × 10 9/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

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.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.