Daniel Nagy’s exhibition of portraits is based on the script of an unrealized film by Pier Paolo Pasolini: Saint Paul. It is a modern interpretation of Saul/Paul's story transferred into our times (Pasolini's time in the original script). From the script of the film the artist Daniel Nagy kept only the parts with Pasolini's proposals. The environment in which Saul/Paul lived is the land of today’s Syria and Turkey. The equivalent of St. Paul from the script is, in the case of the present project, Paolo Dall'Oglio (b.1954), Italian Jesuit priest and peace activist that left Rome for Damascus in the 80's. Near Damascus he recovered an old monastery from the 6th century, Deir Mar Musa. As he was a polyglot he tried to build symbolical bridges between religions and cultures. In 2013 he was taken hostage, brought to Raqqa and beheaded.
The apostle Paul made a similar journey but in the opposite direction: he left Damascus for Rome, where he was beheaded in Nero’s time.

The rest of the portraits are linking the two stories together despite the centuries separating the characters: Nero, the Roman Emperor as a symbol of destruction, Kofi Annan the peace maker, Vasily Vereshchagin, Russian painter and war critic, Count von Moltke, Prussian field marshal.

Paolo Dall'Oglio (1954 - 2013 ?) Italian Jesuit priest.
Kofi Annan (1938 - 2018) Ghanaian diplomat and Secretary-General of the United Nations. In 2001 he was awarded with the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Vasily Vereshchagin (1842 - 1904) Russian painter, historian, ethnographer, philosopher, officer in the Russian army. In 1901 was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace. In his paintings he criticized the brutality of war. The militaristic governments across Europe banned the soldiers from seeing his paintings.
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800 - 1891) Prussian field marshal. He met Vereshchagin in Berlin at his exhibition. After that he issued an order forbidding German soldiers to visit it.
Nero Claudius Caesar (37 - 68) one of the most infamous roman emperors. He is best known for his debaucheries, political murders, persecution of Christians and he is suspected of starting the great fire in Rome in 64.