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Collections

Carlo Saraceni
The Martyrdom of St. Ceciliacirca 1610

On view:
Geffen Galleries, Model Lives in Baroque Italy
Oil painting, dramatic narrative scene with a winged angel descending toward a kneeling woman in red, a recoiling man to the right, musical instruments on the stone floor below
Artist or Maker
Carlo Saraceni
Italy, Venice, circa 1579-1620, active Rome
Title
The Martyrdom of St. Cecilia
Date Made
circa 1610
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Canvas: 53 1/2 × 38 3/4 in. (135.9 × 98.4 cm) Framed: 64 3/8 × 50 × 2 1/2 in. (163.5 × 127 × 6.35 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation
Accession Number
AC1996.37.1
Classification
Paintings
Collecting Area
European Painting and Sculpture
Provenance

Probably Natale Rondanini (1540–1627), Rome, by inheritance to his son;(1) Alessandro Rondanini (d. 1639), by inheritance to his wife; Felice Zacchia Rondanini (1593–1667), Rome,(2) by inheritance to her grandson; Alessandro (1660–1740), Marchese Rondanini, Villa alle Terme di Diocleziano, Albano, outside Rome,(3) by inheritance to; Giuseppe (1725–1801), Marchese Rondanini, by inheritance in 1809 to; Don Camillo Zacchia Rondanini, Rome, by inheritance to; Bartolomeo (1782–1864), Marchese di Capranica, Rome.(4) [Matthiesen Fine Art, Ltd., London, sold 1986 to]; Barbara Piasecka Johnson (1937–2013), Princeton, sold 1996 through; [Matthiesen Fine Art, Ltd., London, sold 1996 to]; LACMA.

Footnotes

(1) Waddingham 1985, was the first to associate the painting with that mentioned in the Rondanini inventory.

(2) Inventory, 2 June 1662, no. 30, Rome, Archivio di Stato, Miscellanea Famiglie, Busta 7. Reprinted in Salerno 1965, p. 280.

(3) Inventory 19–25 January 1741, fol. 110, item 79, Getty Provenance Index, Archival Inventory Database, I-1117, Saraceni.

(4) According to the inscription on the painted surface of the picture (Prohaska 1990, p. 200).

Selected Bibliography
  • Lehmbeck, Leah, editor. Gifts of European Art from The Ahmanson Foundation. Vol. 1, Italian Painting and Sculpture. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2019.
  • Caravaggio, Bernini: Early Baroque in Rome. Veurne, Belgium: Hannibal Publishing, 2019.