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Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Hover to magnify, click for fullscreen
Original fileA detail of an altarpiece showing a choir of six angels singing from songbooks within a golden opening in the heavens. Below, Saint Cecilia turns her head upward in a state of spiritual rapture, surrounded by a group of saints. The scene depicts the transition from earthly senses to the perception of divine harmony.
This work reflects the Neoplatonic hierarchy of music popularized by Marsilio Ficino, where earthly melody is viewed as a shadow of the perfect celestial harmony of the spheres. It illustrates the soul's ascent toward the divine through the medium of sacred sound, a key theme in Renaissance philosophical synthesis.
Marsilio Ficino
Ficino's theories on the 'music of the spheres' and the ability of harmony to align the human spirit with the cosmos provide the philosophical framework for this depiction of musical ecstasy.
Object
Oil on panel
religious
Linked Data
AI AI-cataloged fields generated by gemini-3-flash-preview on April 1, 2026. Getty identifiers are AI-inferred and may require verification.