(Nancy 1597–1649 Rome)
Saint Cecilia,
oil on canvas, 75 x 57.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
European art market;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Francesco Solinas for suggesting the attribution on the basis of a photograph and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

In this painting by Charles Mellin, Saint Cecilia is shown in glory, immersed in golden clouds. At her left is a modern viola da gamba that has been placed against a canterano organ seen on the right, while a clearly legible page of sheet music has fluttered to the ground by her feet. Reminiscent of Roman sculptural reliefs and the pictorial inventions of Poussin (1694–1665), a putto flies in to crown the young Cecilia with flowers and the martyr’s palm: a fresh recollection of the classicising genii populating the early Bacchanals of the Mellin’s French colleague.

Solinas has dated this work to between 1630 and 1633 and it was intended for the domestic devotion of an affluent private collector, as can be deduced from the copious quantity of aquamarine blue applied to the canvas to describe the magnificent, distinctive blue of Saint Cecilia’s robes. This small devotional canvas was probably painted by Mellin at a time shortly before his Apollo which is today in the Motais de Narbonne collection, Paris.

In the present composition Mellin has used a classical pose of a figure at prayer, adapted here to show Cecilia with open arms, turned to the heavens. The same pose is found in an autograph drawing of a slightly later date in the Musée-des-Beaux-Arts, Rennes (inv. no. 794.1.3090). This represents the Apparition of the terrestrial globe to Saint Benedict which was painted by Mellin as part of the fresco cycle dedicated to the life of the saint in the Basilica of Monte Cassino (1635–1637), later destroyed during the Second World War (see P. Malgouyres, Mellin à Monteccassino in: Diaologhi di Storia dell’Arte, 4–5, 1997, pp. 196–205). The figure and atmosphere of the present painting also show the influence of Giovanni Lanfranco (1582–1647) and, as previously mentioned, Nicolas Poussin. These influences are also visible in other works by Mellin, such as the Assumption of the Virgin painted in the early 1630s now in the Museo de Arte Ponce, Porto Rico; while another comparison can be made with the Saint Stephen in prayer in the Royal Palace, Madrid (inv. no. 10141865, see Gonzalo Redìn Michaus (ed.), Da Caravaggio a Bernini. Capolavori del Seicento italiano nelle collezioni Reali di Spagna, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2017, pp. 174–177, cat. no. 18).

Charles Mellin underwent his early training in Nancy around 1610–1615 in the ambit of Jacques Bellange (1575–1637), one of the most refined artists active at the court of Duke Charles III of Lorrain during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Like other painters recommended by the court at Nancy to Christina of Lorrain (1565–1637), the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Mellin reached Florence in 1620, before travelling to Rome and Naples where he was active between circa 1622 and 1649. ‘Carlo Lorenese’, as he was called in Italy, reached the apogee of his career in Rome during the pontificate of Urban VIII Barberini.