The Healing of the Cripple at the Pool of Bethesda

There was an increasing tendency in the seventeenth century to transform church spaces into stages for heavenly apparitions and visions. One of the most intriguing examples of painterly transformation of a choir into an exedra or stage set is Sebastiano Conca’s Healing of the Cripple at the Pool of Bethesda in the choir apse of church of the venerable Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena. The scene was selected to provide hope to the infirm.