August Wolf

Weinheim 1842 – 1915 Venice
The Rapture of St Cecilia
High-quality repetition after Raphael’s painting of the same name
Oil on canvas, relined
238 x 150 cm, with frame 275 x 185 cm
Signed on lower left
Cf. Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, inv. no. 577

The painting shows a type of Sacra Conversazione, which suggests a meeting or conversation between several saints. In the centre is Saint Cecilia with a portable pipe organ, the portative, looking upwards, where the cloud cover has opened up to reveal a choir of angels. It is surrounded by several saints, such as St Paul on the left with his sword as an attribute, behind him St John the Evangelist with the eagle, on the right in the background Bishop Augustine of Hippo and in front Mary Magdalene with an ointment jar. In the foreground, various musical instruments are scattered on the ground.

The original version of this depiction was created by Raphael da Urbino (Urbino 1483 – 1520 Rome) around 1514 and is now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna (inv. no. 577). It was commissioned by Elena Buglioli dall’Olio for the family chapel in the church of San Giovanni in Monte Uliveto in Bologna. This depiction was reproduced several times, for example by Marcantonio Raimondi (MET inv. no. 17.3.573) or Giulio Bonasone (MET inv. no. 1983.1023).

August Wolf created this high-quality repetition of Raphael’s painting. Wolf graduated from the Nuremberg School of Art and met the collector Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack in Munich, for whom he produced full-size reproductions of major works from Venetian churches between 1870 and 1881. He later also made these for other clients, skilfully imitating the Venetian Cinquecento style and also producing his own works. Over 40 paintings by Wolf are now on display in the Schack Collection at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. What is interesting about this painting is that Wolf takes up the composition of the Florentine painter Raphael exactly but varies it in the style of 16th century Venetian painting. This can be seen in the sharper contours, the stronger shading, and the colouring. The result is an exciting combination of ‘disegno’ (Italian for drawing) and ‘colorito’ (Italian for colour): the artistic idea, central to the Florentine artistic ideal, and the intense use of colour, the essential element of the Venetian conception of art.