Saint Cecilia Playing the Viol

In 1599 the tomb of Saint Cecilia was opened during work on her church in Trastevere, in Rome, and devotion to her spread through the city. She had long been honoured as the patron saint of music, and Domenichino shows her that way, playing a bass viol with her eyes turned upward, while a small winged boy holds the open score above his head for her. A recorder and a closed book lie on the ledge in front. In the 1620s the painting belonged to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV. His brother Niccolò sold it to a Frenchman, the sieur de Nogent, who brought it to France. The Paris banker Everhard Jabach then sold it to Louis XIV in 1662, and in 1695 it hung in the king's private apartment at Versailles.