| Saint Cecilia Altarpiece | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Raphael |
| Year | c. 1514–1517 |
| Type | Oil transferred from panel to canvas |
| Dimensions | 220 cm × 136 cm (87 in × 54 in) |
| Location | Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna |
The Saint Cecilia Altarpiece is an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. Completed in his later years, in around 1516–1517, the painting depicts Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians and Church music, listening to a choir of angels in the company of Saints Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine and Mary Magdalene. Commissioned for a church in Bologna, the painting now hangs in that city's Pinacoteca Nazionale. According to Giorgio Vasari the musical instruments strewn about Cecilia's feet were not painted by Raphael but by his student, Giovanni da Udine.[1]
The English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley described the painting as follows:
The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead—she holds an organ in her hands—her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly St. John, who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards her, languid with the depth of emotion. At her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and unstrung.[2]
- ^ G. Vasari, Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, Milan, 1906, VI, 551. Late in his career Raphael typically assigned portions of his works to assistants. On this point see Andrea Emiliani," L'estasi di Santa Cecilia," in L'estasi di Santa Cecilia di Raffaello da Urbino nella Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, ed. Andrea Emiliani, Bologna: Alfa, 1983, i–xciii,
- ^ Letters from Italy; quoted in Singleton (1899), p. 288.