The Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia

The Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia (c. 1514) at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna was commissioned by the noble Elena Duglioli for her family chapel at San Giovanni in Monte. Saint Cecilia, patron of music, hears celestial harmony — a choir of angels sings above while the broken instruments of earthly music lie scattered at her feet. Raphael's composition presents Cecilia flanked by Saints Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine, and Mary Magdalene in a sacra conversazione, but the real subject is the hierarchy of earthly and divine music, the abandoned instruments symbolizing the worthlessness of worldly art compared to celestial harmony. The work had extraordinary influence on subsequent representations of Cecilia and on the relationship between music and religious experience in Italian art.

The scattered musical instruments at Cecilia's feet are rendered with still-life precision, contrasting with the saint's ecstatic upward gaze. Raphael's luminous palette and balanced composition create an image of transcendent beauty.