The Saint Cecilia Altarpiece is an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael.

According to Giorgio Vasari the musical instruments strewn about Cecilia's feet were not painted by Raphael but by his student, Giovanni da Udine.

[1] The English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley described the painting as follows: The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead—she holds an organ in her hands—her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life.

She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly St. John, who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards her, languid with the depth of emotion.

[2]The altarpiece was commissioned for a chapel dedicated to Saint Cecilia in the Augustinian church of San Giovanni in Monte in Bologna.

[14] There is an engraving of the painting by Marcantonio Raimondi: it differs significantly from the work, and some scholars have suggested that it reflects a lost sketch for the altarpiece.

Saints Augustine (wearing his mitre) and Paul look downward; John looks out towards the viewer; the Magdalene looks upward to the angelic host, as Cecilia does.