It's a frightening painting, really. Caravaggio painted a world of skin, veins, and blood. No other painter captures the sordid physicality of man, and no other painter uses sexual desire (the sin of the flesh) so vividly as the essence of mortality. Bodies are flaccid and meaty. Faces leer.
Yet this one is a little different. Paul's experience is perhaps most easily described as rapture. But consider that word for a moment. Note the uneasy proximity to "rape." Find the source of light in the painting and you will see that it comes from above, it dominates the scene, it is the primary actor. It's hard not to see the event as a violation, a invasion of the body by the spirit. Perhaps this is the mortification spoken of in Catholic doctrine. I have never had this feeling, but the painting suggests to a powerful extent that Paul's rapture is as much a product of a sudden realization that he is a flimsy, mortal thing, as it is a result of the light from God. To take it even futher: for me, the painting imagines that the pivotal moment of spiritual awakening is a result of the knowledge of death.
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