Saint Cecilia
Guido Reni·1606
Historical Context
Saint Cecilia at the Norton Simon Museum (1606) is an early work showing Reni painting the patron saint of music in the years when he was first establishing his distinctive style in Rome. Cecilia, a third-century Roman noblewoman who refused to consummate her Christian marriage and was ultimately martyred, was associated with music through a mistranslation of a Latin text that described her singing in her heart during her wedding. By the Renaissance this musical association was fully established, and Raphael's famous Saint Cecilia altarpiece (c. 1516, now in Bologna) set the standard for all subsequent treatments of the subject — including Reni's. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, built on the collection assembled by industrialist Norton Simon from the 1950s to 1990s, holds an outstanding collection of Italian and Dutch Baroque paintings. This early Reni shows the artist before his mature silver style fully developed, his handling still warmer and more indebted to the Carracci tradition of his Bolognese training.
Technical Analysis
The saint's inspired upward gaze and the organ create a composition of musical devotion. Reni's early handling shows the influence of the Carracci academy while anticipating his mature luminous manner.
Look Closer
- ◆Saint Cecilia's lute or portative organ identifies her role as music's patron through her primary.
- ◆Her upward gaze and parted lips suggest she is listening to the celestial music of her legendary.
- ◆Reni's early 1606 style shows warmer, denser paint handling than his later pale sfumato — flesh.
- ◆The saint's dress and coiffure carry a 17th-century Roman beauty convention hovering between.
