Saint Cecilia and an Angel

This painting is an interpretation of the original oil on canvas painted by Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Lanfranco that is on display at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Saint Cecilia
Guglielmo, Eugenio
Italian American, 19nn – 20nn

Interpretation of “Saint Cecilia and an Angel”
2019
acrylic on canvas
overall: 76.20 x 76.20 cm (30 x 30 in).

The curiosity for this study was to shift the time period to any point in time, rather than the late Renaissance. That shift entailed enhancing an aspect of the figure – the dress with its many folds so that your attention is drawn here first instead of the light-illuminated face, removing the angel, and replacing the pipe organ with a piano. The Renaissance colors were replaced with the triad of orange, green, and violet. The background was replaced by a neutral gray dome from the Roman Pantheon and Gallery’s Rotunda to allow the figure to move forward in the canvas. Skin colors blended orange with phthalo green (blue shade) to create the highlights.