Paul Before Felix

Wrongfully imprisoned, the Apostle Paul makes a dramatic appeal for a fair trial to the Roman Procurator Felix in the latter's judgment hall at Ceasarea. Hogarth’s original painting (from which the print was made) was commissioned as decoration for the law court of Lincoln's Inn Hal in London in 1748. Demonstrating the "proper" method of grand history painting, the composition draws heavily on well-known High Renaissance paintings by Raphael and others.