El éxtasis de Santa Cecilia

Saint Cecilia lowers her organ and looks up as a choir of angels opens in the sky, while earthly instruments lie broken at her feet. Raphael painted not a saint to be worshipped, but the act of listening to heaven.

The story behind the painting

The altarpiece was made for a chapel of Saint Cecilia in the Augustinian church of San Giovanni in Monte in Bologna. Vasari says Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci commissioned it in 1513, but the chapel's patron was Elena Duglioli dall'Olio, a Bolognese noblewoman later beatified. Most historians now think the Pucci acted as her agents with Raphael and that it was commissioned around 1516, when the chapel was finished. Wikipedia dates the painting around 1516-1517, while Wikidata gives 1514. Duglioli was devoted to Cecilia, owned a relic of the saint, and persuaded her husband not to consummate their marriage.

What to look for

Cecilia stands at the centre with a small organ in her hands, eyes lifted to the angels singing above. Around her are Saint Paul leaning on his sword, John the Evangelist with his eagle peeking from his robes, Saint Augustine with his crosier, and Mary Magdalene with her alabaster jar. The poet Shelley wrote of her deep dark eyes, her chestnut hair flung back, her face calmed by the depth of its rapture, and of John bending toward her. At her feet lie musical instruments, broken and unstrung, which Vasari says were painted by Raphael's pupil Giovanni da Udine.

Meaning and intent

Cecilia had been linked with music since the Middle Ages, but the broken instruments seem to stand for leaving earthly pleasures behind for the sacred. Here she embodies religious music as a path to union with God. The painting also celebrates chastity: her simple belt was a Renaissance symbol of it, John was patron of virginity, and Paul praised celibacy. Each saint was associated with visions, as was Duglioli herself, and the heavenly choir echoes her own devotions, in which music mattered. The picture is tied to its patron's life on many levels.

Legacy

The painting was taken to Paris in 1798, and there it was moved from panel to canvas. In 1815 it returned to Bologna and, after cleaning, was hung in the Pinacoteca Nazionale. Its condition is poor, damaged by repainting over the years. An engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi differs a lot, with angels playing harp, triangle and violin and the saints in other poses. Some scholars think it records a lost sketch, but since Raimondi often changed Raphael's works, it may simply be a free variant.