Religious, Portraits, St. Cecilia, Music, Raphael
"St. Cecilia"
(The St. Cecilia Altarpiece by Raffaello Sanrio da Urbino
The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia by Raphael)
Wood engraving made after a painting by Raphael. Published ca 1890.
On the reverse side of the page is a description of this painting by Raphael.
Original antique print
Saint Cecilia is the patroness of music and musicians.
Image: 17.5 x 11 cm (6.8 x 4.3")
Italian High Renaissance master Raphael, patron saint of musicians and Church music, listening to a choir of angels in the company of St. Paul, St. John the Evangelist, St. Augustine and Mary Magdalene. Commissioned for a church in Bologna, the painting now hangs in that city's Pinacoteca Nazionale.
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.
Saint Cecilia (Latin: Sancta Caecilia), Cecelia, Roman virgin martyr, venerated in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches, patroness of music and musicians, Cecilia "sang in her heart to the Lord", Canon of the Mass in the Latin Church, Santa Cecilia, Trastevere, Pope Urban I, Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Lanfranco, Saint Cecilia and an Angel, The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia by Raphael, The Martyrdom of St Cecilia by Carlo Saraceni,
