Celestial Music

Simon Vouet (1590–1649) is considered the most important French painter of the first half of the 17^_th century. Before returning to France in 1627, he spent a long time in Italy, where he gained prestige and fame equal to that of the greatest masters. After settling in Rome, in 1626 he married there the famous painter Virginia da Vezzo, who is said to have been just as remarkable for her mind and her talent as for her beauty. We are able to appreciate that beauty because Simon chose his young wife as a model when, in the same year as his marriage, he started to paint the Saint Cecilia that adorns the cover of this issue of Magnificat. 

Her soaring, ecstatic soul

Saint Cecilia, ancient sources tell us, lived during the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. She belonged to a noble Roman family, the Cecilii. A Christian, she was engaged to a young man named Valerian, whom she converted to Christianity. After their wedding, having refused to sacrifice to the pagan deities, they suffered martyrdom together around the year 220. However, various traditions add that during their wedding—or according to others, during their martyrdom—she went into ecstasy, ravished by the music of the heavens. Because of this privilege, she was chosen as the patron saint of musicians, whether they are composers, performers, or instrument-makers. Finally, in the 13^_th century, in the Golden Legend, Blessed Jacobus de Voragine combined, embellished, and developed all the traditions about her into a beautiful story that has inspired countless artists. 

Here, then, is Cecilia, caught up in ecstasy, as depicted by Simon Vouet. Her eyes are turned toward heaven; she is frozen in a contemplative attitude. She no longer plays the organ.^₁ Her lips are closed; she has stopped singing. Not a word, not a gesture, as though she were no longer on earth; her soul soars, for it is granted to her to share in the divine harmonies of the celestial music. From Cecilia’s fingers, which are detached from the keyboard, in the lower right, the artist composes a diagonal that structures his work and signifies the passage from terrestrial to celestial experience. Passing through the eyes of the saint, then to the upper left by way of the cherubs, this diagonal follows Cecilia’s glance, which reaches the highest heavens, the next world where ineffable music eternally celebrates the supreme beauty of him who is beyond all things. And here Cecilia has received the divine grace of joining the song of her heart with the choir of angels and saints in glory. 

The transfiguration of music

Showing a hierarchy between three levels of music, the work by Simon Vouet is designed as a liturgical catechesis. At the lowest level, represented here by the organ, is instrumental music in which the sound comes from material instruments. Then, at a higher level, is vocal music, or rather choral singing—several voices together in unison—in which the sound comes from human persons who are created in the image of God and, what is more, are sons and daughters of God, coheirs of the kingdom of heaven with their brother Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And finally, at the highest level—suggested here by the cherubs but situated beyond the frame—is the celestial music that proceeds from the eternal contemplation of God’s beauty and perfect communion with him. This picture teaches us that there can be, that there should be harmonious continuity between choral music—sung in a choir with one heart—and the ineffable celestial music that it is called to prefigure. Music does this in fact when the choral song is a prayer that offers up all of human life in communion with the Eucharist of Jesus Christ and transforms it into praise to the Father. 

Magnificat offers us the opportunity to join each day in the great prayer of the Church, every morning and every evening, when we intone hymns, united in one heart with all who are baptized. When we lift up our voices in this way, do we not have the privilege of singing with the choir of the communion of saints and sharing in a foretaste of the celestial music? 

_¹ The depiction of Saint Cecilia with an organ is said to be due to a copyist’s error: whereas a liturgical reading for the feast of Saint Cecilia said: “On the day of her wedding, Cecilia sang to God in her heart,” one copyist supposedly replaced the Latin words in corde suo with ad vocem organorum, “at the sound of the organs,” and eventually all the others copied this version.

Click here to see the entire art cover

Pierre-Marie Dumont
Saint Cecilia (c. 1626), Simon Vouet (1590–1649), Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. © akg-images / Album.