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About This Work
The saint holds a small portable organ with falling pipes, signaling her disregard for earthly music in favor of the divine harmony she perceives in the heavens. At her feet lie discarded and broken instruments, including a tambourine and pipes, while her companions stand in contemplative poses. The scene is topped by a celestial vision of angels singing from musical manuscripts amidst the clouds.
This composition illustrates the Renaissance Neoplatonic distinction between 'musica instrumentalis' (audible music) and 'musica mundana' (the cosmic harmony of the heavens). The discarded instruments represent the transition from sensory experience to divine intellectual revelation, a theme central to the thought of Marsilio Ficino and the Florentine Academy.