Raffaello (1483-1520)
Estasi di Santa Cecilia (Ecstasy of St. Cecilia)
c.1513
Oil transferred from panel to canvas, 236 x 149 cm
Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna
Performed around 1513 for the chapel of Blessed Elena Duglioli, who had built her own image of sanctity by referring to the legend of Saint Cecilia.
The figure of the martyr is proposed in an unprecedented “musical” representation full of symbolic meanings, which in the eyes of the devotee recalls the themes of divine love and contempt for worldly goods, symbolized by the instruments of earthly and profane music abandoned on the ground.
One of the favorite works of the Carraccis and Guido Reni, it played a fundamental role in the figurative culture of the seventeenth-century Classical Ideal. (PNB)
See also:
• Augustine of Hippo (354-430)