On the Significance of Saint Paul’s Sword in Raphael’s Saint Cecilia Altarpiece

Raphael was exacting in rendering the accoutrements of the figures in his paintings. Indeed, he frequently researched a particular personage’s collateral effects in designing them. When the artist in his Disputa (Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican) portrayed Saint Gregory the Great, the famous doctor of the church, he presented him seated on the marble chair that was then believed to have been his pontifical throne, an object still kept as a relic in the church of San Gregorio in Rome. This tendency can also be observed in the painter’s portraits, in which a sitter’s possessions were on occasion rendered with such verisimilitude that we can still locate them. For example, we can identify the fourteenth-century book, now known as the Hamilton Bible, perused by Leo X in Raphael’s portrait