Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance: The Emergence of a Musical Icon.

Abstract

From the 15th century, many artists and sculptors depicted the early Christian virgin martyr Cecilia as a musician, singing or playing an instrument, while composers dedicated works to her. For a spell of more than 200 years Cecilia was regarded as the patron saint of music and musicians. Before the 15th century, however, Cecilia was just another virgin saint with no obvious distinguishing skills or attributes. The purpose of John A. Rice’s book, which he states clearly in the introduction, is to plot the course of Cecilia’s dramatic trajectory from bottom-rung saint to artists’ favourite and musicians’ muse. And while the shape-shifting Cecilia enjoyed her newfound status during the period commonly labelled the Renaissance, the author points out that detractors questioning her right to this honour emerged as early as the 17th century. These detractors, and the author of this new book, remark that the late-Roman Passio of Cecilia’s life simply does not refer to the saint’s musical practices or abilities. How did this saint then acquire her musical status and cultural renown? John A. Rice presents in lucid prose the social and cultural context which fostered the transformation of Saint Cecilia into a poster girl for the musical arts during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Scholars have delved into Cecilia’s frequent appearances from the medieval period in manuscript illuminations, frescoes, and altarpieces that depict her singing or playing the organ, clavichord, virginal, violin, bass-viol and lute. The author takes an interdisciplinary approach to argue that Cecilia’s perceived musical talents grew from the evolving performance of the liturgy, and from exchanges between the visual arts, music and musical institutions, and among artists, musicians and patrons. Cecilia’s cult began with the 5th-century Passio sancta Caeciliae by Arnobius the Younger, which spread through Europe until its practice was displaced by the liturgy for Cecilia’s Day, 22 November, and, in the 13th century, by Jacobus de Voragine’s popular Golden Legend. The reinvention seems to have stemmed from a single phrase in the Passio, ‘cantantibus organis’, ‘while the instruments sang’ (at Cecilia’s unwanted, arranged marriage ceremony), and took flight through the brushes of artists. In their hands, the saint became identified with the organ, to distinguish her from other virgin martyrs that wealthy patrons requested be included alongside the depictions of the Virgin in the artworks they ordered for their homes and local churches. He situates this practice in a context which saw artists include attributes for other saints despite their acknowledged shaky origins, such Agnes’s lamb (from the latin agnus) and Jerome’s lion (‘borrowed’ from another saint’s life). Rice acknowledges the scholarly work that addresses Cecilia’s role as a musician in the visual arts, in particular that of Thomas Connolly, and makes new assertions about the saint’s stratospheric rise. The author refers to visual imagery from the medieval and early modern periods, from a historiated initial C depicting Cecilia’s wedding feast in the Beaupr e Antiphonary (13th century, Walters Art Museum) to Raphael’s famous Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia altarpiece, and beyond. Michiel Coxcie’s Saint Cecilia at the Virginal painting of 1569, in the Prado, serves as the book’s cover, and is identified by the author as the most representative image of the saint as she was perceived during the Renaissance. But as the author