Antiveduto Grammatica

Probably the De Floen Adlercrona family, Austria or Sweden (according to an eighteenth-century armorial wax seal on the verso).

This hitherto unpublished early work by Antiveduto Grammatica depicts the elegantly-attired Saint Cecilia playing the organ. Wearing an elaborate brocade gown and gazing heavenward, the patroness of musicians is accompanied by a woman playing a violin, just discernable in the shadowy background. The influence of Caravaggio is evident in both the composition’s theme and form: the use of strong chiaroscuro and dramatic tenebrism, characteristic of early-seventeenth-century Roman art, highlights the saint’s musically-inspired divine reverie.

The present composition is closely related to two other paintings by Grammatica: one work, rendered in reverse, in Madrid (Museo del Prado, inv. no. P000353) and another, signed and dated 1611, in a private collection in Salinas.¹

¹ On the former, see G. Papi, Antiveduto Gramatica, Soncino 1995, p. 92, no. 13, reproduced fig. 8; and H.P. Riedl, Antiveduto della Grammatica (1570/71–1626), Berlin 1998, pp. 78–80, no. 4, reproduced fig. 5. On the latter, see Papi 1995, p. 90, no. 9, reproduced fig. 3; and Riedl 1998, pp. 77–78, no. 3, reproduced fig. 4.