Of all the saints, Cecilia’s patronage of music and musicians is among the best known. As early as 1570, people across Europe have been using her name in association with music festivals, schools, societies, and a succession of fine music of which Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to Saint Cecilia is my personal favourite.

Her legend, though, barely mentions music, and makes no claim that she was an instrumentalist or musician. This weekend, in this article and tomorrow’s sequel, come play detective and discover how she was given this role, and trace its interpretation in some magnificent paintings of her from the early Renaissance to well into the twentieth century.

Cecilia’s legend is muddled. She may have been a Roman noblewoman who was martyred in about 230 CE alongside her husband Valerian, her brother-in-law Tiburtius and a Roman soldier Maximus, which is the account given in the Acts of the Martyrs. Alternatively, she might have been martyred between 176-180 CE in Sicily. Now that we’ve got that clear, some claim that she had taken a vow of chastity, but was forced into marriage with Valerian. The relevant scene is her wedding, where apparently she sat apart singing to God in her heart.

She managed to avoid consummation of her marriage by threatening her new husband with an angel of the Lord who would punish him if he touched her. She was later martyred with her husband and his brother: after her neck had been struck three times by the executioner’s sword, she is supposed to have lived for another three days, during which she asked the Pope to turn her home into a church.

Does she then have any audible association with music?

Not according to early paintings of her. This is the ‘Master of the Cadolzburger Altar’ (really an anonymous artist) in the altarpiece they painted for Cadolzburg in Germany between 1425-30. The left wing of the triptych shows Saint Cecilia holding her attribute of a palm frond, and a couple of floral wreaths. There’s no sign of a musical instrument at all.

Francesco Botticini’s Saint Cecilia between Saint Valerian and Saint Tiburtius with a Donor from about 1470 also lacks anything musical. Her husband Valerian is shown on the left, Saint Cecilia in the centre, Tiburtius at the right, and the tiny supplicant at the lower left is the donor who footed the bill.

The next painting is also anonymous, this time by the ‘Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece’, who is thought to have been active in Cologne, Germany, between about 1470-1510. This altarpiece was painted for the church of Saint Bartholomew in Cologne: Saint Agnes, Saint Bartholomew and Saint Cecilia, which is believed to date from 1500-05.

From the left, we have Saint Agnes bearing her palm frond, with a lamb by her feet, the miniature donor, Saint Bartholomew (patron of that church), and Saint Cecilia playing an organetto, portative or portable organ. These small organs were first used by the Romans, and an example has been excavated in the remains of Pompeii. They then slipped into obscurity, only to be revived in the thirteenth century, and became popular over the following couple of hundred years. Its presence here may have resulted from a misinterpretation of the chant which was and still is used on Saint Cecilia’s Day, 22 November.

In Latin, this reads
Cantantibus organis Caecilia Domino decantabat dicens: fiat cor meum immaculatum, ut non confundar.
It was so well-known that Chaucer translates it for us in his Second Nun’s Tale:
And while the organs maden melodie
To God alone in hart thus sang she:
“O Lord, my soule and eek my body gye
Unwemmed, lest it confounded be.”

“While the organ played…” doesn’t take into account the fact that organis is in the plural, and it may have been intended to mean “while the musicians played…” referring to a group of three or four instrumentalists rather than an organ or organetto, with its hand bellows and angelic assistant.

At about the same time as that was being painted, a team of artists was at work on a series of frescoes in the entrance to an oratory being built onto the church of San Giacomo Maggiore in the centre of Bologna, in homage to Saints Cecilia and Valerian. The first and ninth frescoes are most relevant here.

Francesco Francia’s initial scene of their marriage (above), from 1504-06, makes no reference to music or musicians. Lorenzo Costa’s penultimate scene of Saint Cecilia giving away all her worldly goods to the poor (below), painted over the same period, is similarly bereft of musical references. In this oratory devoted to the legend of the saint, there’s no mention of any association with music, musicians, or musical instruments, let alone an organetto.

Then in 1513-14 something extraordinary happened in Raphael’s workshop in Rome. When designing an altarpiece commissioned by a Bolognese lady for her family’s chapel in the church of S. Giovanni in Monte, Bologna, the master decided to show her holding an organetto, with several musical instruments at her feet. I can’t conceive how Raphael could have seen or even heard of the altarpiece which had recently been painted for the church of Saint Bartholomew in Cologne, and in the absence of any evidence to suggest that, I can only conclude that Raphael independently arrived at the same conclusion, perhaps as a result of the same confusion over the meaning of the words of the chant.

So Raphael’s Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia more than anything else secured the popularity of Saint Cecilia as the patron saint of music and musicians. It must have been very well-known: within just a few years, other painters took up the same attribute for Saint Cecilia.

Some time between 1507-17, Girolamo Marchesi painted The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Michael, Catherine of Alexandria, Cecilia, and Jerome, and placed a miniature organetto beside the saint as she prayed to the heavens.

In 1523, just a decade after Raphael’s painting, Parmigianino’s Saint Cecilia and David shows her with pan pipes, a large bowed bass, and a recorder-like wind instrument. She now wasn’t just an organetto player, but a versatile musician.

Federico Barocci’s Saint Cecilia with Saint John, Mary Magdalene, Paul and Catherine from about 1555 borrows heavily from Raphael.

Tintoretto joined the concert in 1565, with The Resurrection of Christ with Saints Cassian and Cecilia, sitting the saint at her organetto.

In 1569, just before the first written record of a musical festival in honour of Cecilia, Michiel Coxie painted her, in Saint Cecilia, playing a harpsichord, with voice parts being read by children as a young angel sings his wings out.

Today’s last painting, made by Andrés de la Concha during the period 1570-1610, shows Saint Cecilia in religious ecstasy (centre) and playing a more substantial pipe organ (right), with angelic instrumentalists in the clouds above. In less than a century after Raphael’s painting, Saint Cecilia was well and truly established as the patron saint of music and musicians.