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©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Bernardo Strozzi (workshop of)

Saint Cecilia

ca. 1625 - 1630
Oil on canvas.
150 x 110 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
381
(
1959.5
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Bernardo Strozzi was an influential figure for early 17th-century Italian painting, in particular for Genoese art of the first half of the century. Trained in his native city with Pietro Sorri, in 1598 Strozzi entered the Capuchin monastery of San Barnaba in Genoa, which he left for family reasons in 1610 and thereafter devoted himself to painting. Strozzi’s earliest works reveal a knowledge of Tuscan Mannerism as well as the art of Francesco Vanni and Federico Barocci whose work he could have studied at first hand in Genoa. In addition, it has been suggested that he was influenced by Cerano, Morazzone, Giulio Cesare Procaccini and Caravaggio. The naturalist approach of the latter becomes evident in Strozzi’s works in the 1620s at a time when his palette also became warmer and brighter due to the influence of Rubens and other Flemish painters working in Genoa. A large number of works by Strozzi have survived, whose chronology has been difficult to establish as very few of them are dated. Strozzi primarily devoted his activities to religious painting, genre compositions and portraiture.

Saint Cecilia entered the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in 1959. In 1957 the canvas was with French & Co. in New York, passing from there to the Mirto Turri collection in Switzerland and to the Fasciani Escher gallery in Lugano. Between 1969 and 2002 the painting appeared in the catalogues of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection as an autograph work, but following a detailed study of the painting, Roberto Contini decided that it should be considered a workshop production. His conclusion was based on a painstaking examination of the technique and style of the painting, as well as a comparison with the other known versions of this composition by Strozzi. Among these, the finest in terms of quality and thus the probable prototype is the one in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. The canvas in the Museo Civico in Roverto is considered a workshop version, while the one in the Narodowe Muzeum in Wroclaw is thought to be a copy. It has been suggested that Saint Cecilia forms a pair with the outstanding painting by Strozzi of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, which has a similar composition and in which the female model is physically similar to this one.

Saint Cecilia can be recognised by the musical instruments that surround her and which are among her traditional attributes. These include organ pipes on the left, the lower part of a cello or lute on which she rests the hand that holds the martyr’s palm, and a violin on the ground on the right below one of the huge columns that forms the backdrop. The saint’s figure attracts the viewer’s attention through the shapes, textures and colours of her ample robe. The white cloth used for the collar, sleeves and sash stands out against dusty pink of the sleeves and the light blue of the billowing skirt. The powerful beam of light falling from the left strongly illuminates the young woman, constructing the broad planes of her clothing in a geometrical manner but leaving some of her facial features slightly undefined.

Mar Borobia

17th Century17th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Saint Cecilia. Santa Cecilia, 1625-1630
Saint Cecilia
Bernardo Strozzi (workshop of)

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Saint Cecilia. Santa Cecilia, 1625-1630
Saint Cecilia
Bernardo Strozzi (workshop of)

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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