Saint Cecilia and the Angel

1610 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

religious

There is a long history of attributions of this painting to various artists. The attribution to Saraceni is accepted by the majority of art historians. However, the attribution to a non-Italian, Guy François, has been sustained by all the French critics, notwithstanding the absence of any confirmed Roman works by this artist.

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About the Artist

Carlo Saraceni

1579 – 1620

Saraceni spent almost all his career in Rome, where he formed his style under the influence of Caravaggio and Elsheimer, painting small luminous pictures of figures in landscapes as well as much larger altarpieces, including the replacement of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin (Louvre, Paris), which the church of Sta Maria della Scala had rejected in 1606. Saraceni's picture is still "in situ". He painted several other smaller variants or versions of the picture, so the design was evidently popular. His style was sensitive and poetic, showing a delicate feeling for colour and tone. His liking for turbans, tasselled fringes, and stringy drapery folds, and his richly impasted paint may have influenced Dutch artists in Rome such as Lastman and Pynas, and through them Rembrandt.

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