3-098-915 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Saint Paul, surprised by Nero at the moment of converting Sabina Poppaea, 1858. St Paul with Poppaea Sabina Nero's wife. The work is described in the Catalogue of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts of 1858 with the following passage: "The Doctor of the Gentiles had tried to convert the worldly woman, blindly loved by Nero, to the faith of Jesus Christ, and sought to make her abandon that impure and incestuous love. Nero, calling him a vile and perverse man, and giving him other similar epithets, loaded him with chains; and finally, seeing that he could not persuade him to stop advising the young woman, he decided to condemn him to death." Paul's death is believed to have occurred after the Great Fire of Rome in July 64 AD/CE, but before the last year of Nero's reign, in 68 AD/CE - Eusebius states that Paul was killed during the Neronian Persecution. There is no historical evidence to suggest that Paul converted Empress Poppaea Sabina to Christianity.