Death of St. Cecilia

Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Wierix engraved this depiction of Saint Cecilia based on an earlier Italian image. Saint Cecilia was an ancient Roman noblewoman and sworn virgin whose family forced her to marry. She told her husband that her virginity was protected by an angel, and he did not touch her. The Roman government martyred both she and her husband in the second century CE. The engraving depicts the moment after her martyrdom. The cuts on her neck, from being struck thrice with a sword, bleed as the heavens open to her. A version of this print must have traveled to the Mughal Empire, likely with Jesuits, as a Mughal court artist named Nini–one of the few named women artists we know of from the time–created a rendition. It was included within a miniature album of the Emperor Shah Jahan. Nini erased the neck wounds, transforming Cecilia into a heroine within the dramatic register of Persian poetic love.

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