This picture represents Saint Paul's first miracle, performed in the presence of the Proconsul Sergius Paulus. Elymas, who was adviser to the Proconsul, and had previously ordered Paul to be whipped for his Christian faith, was struck blind by words spoken to him by Saint Paul. This event led to the Proconsul's conversion to Christianity.

The so-called Raphael Cartoons, from which the image of this print is derived, are seven full size designs for tapestries by the great Italian Renaissance artist Raphael (1483-1520). They illustrate passages from the Bible concerning the lives of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. None of them is smaller than ten feet high by thirteen feet wide. They belong to Her Majesty the Queen and have been on loan to this museum since 1865. The earliest print relating to the Raphael Cartoons dates from 1516, the year in which Raphael received final payment for the commission. It inaugurates an extraordinary case study in the history of printmaking, stretching over more than four hundred and fifty years and across a wide range of printmaking techniques.

George Baxter is famous for having developed a method of printing in full colour. In a total output of three hundred and seventy seven prints, only fifteen, including his prints of the Cartoons, are so-called Baxterotypes. Printed in shades of brown, they simulate photographs and the name echoes the word daguerreotype, the earliest photographic process, announced in 1839. George Baxter's premonition that the depiction of works of art by means of prints made by human hand would soon be facing a challenge from the new photographic processes, was correct. His simulated photographs of the Cartoons predate the first actual photographs of the Cartoons by only three years.