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Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone (ca. 1483–1539)
Conversion of St. Paul, early 1530s
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white gouache, over traces of black chalk, on blue paper faded to green gray
10 3/4 x 16 1/8 inches (272 x 410 mm.)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; I, 70
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This drawing is the modello for a well-known painting by Pordenone, now lost, that must have impressed critics and artists alike through the virtuosity of its radically foreshortened figures and its splendid sense of movement and energy. It spawned several copies, Pordenone repeated sections of it for Venetian collectors, and Tintoretto used it as inspiration for a painting of the same subject (National Gallery of Art, Washington).

Pordenone's composition adapted elements from a tapestry cartoon of the same subject by Raphael, which was displayed in the house of Cardinal Domenico Grimani in Venice.

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