O Êxtase de Santa Cecília

Cecilia, the patron of church music, stands at the centre holding a small portable organ, and she is letting it slip from her hands. Its little pipes are tumbling loose. She has stopped listening to it because she can hear something better, a choir of angels breaking through the clouds above. Around her feet lie other instruments, a viol, a tambourine, some of them broken, the ordinary music of the world set down and forgotten. Raphael painted this around 1514 for a chapel in Bologna, and the still life of instruments on the ground was so admired that he had a specialist assistant, Giovanni da Udine, help render them. Saint Paul stands to the side, chin on hand, looking down at the abandoned instruments as if working out what they now mean.