Saint Cecilia

Gregorio Lazzarini (Venezia, 1655 – Villabona Veronese, 10 novembre 1730)
Saint Cecilia
oil on canvas cm 159 x 123
The painting is cited by Vincenzo Da Canal, "Vita di Gregorio Lazzarini", in the posthumous edition of Venice 1809, p 49. The text was actually written in 1732; Lazzarini had died on 10 November 1730. According to Da Canal, Lazzarini had painted for the nobleman Lin, who, upon the death of Pietro Liberi in 1691, had purchased his palace at the turn of the Grand Canal, opposite Ca' Foscari, a "Saint Cecilia, graceful, life-size, playing the organ, dressed in real clothes". Your painting shows her in fact in life-size, with regal clothes, and an attitude of great grace. In the booklet at least two other Saint Cecilias are cited, but none are characterized in this way.
Da Canal says that after having purchased a painting from Lazzarini, the nobleman Lin had him "work for him for many years" (p. 46); when this happened has never been clarified. For Da Canal, it would seem to be around 1695, for others, perhaps more correctly, in the very early years of the eighteenth century, given that the palace was certainly two-story until after 1687, and has been three-story since 1703. It is clear that paintings are not ordered to keep them in the dust of the bricklayers. In reality, stylistically the painting should be around 1695, close for example to the Morosini paintings in the Ducal Palace, from 1694, and to the altarpiece from 1696 in the Treviso Museum; but only a few of the very many Lin paintings have been identified, and it is therefore difficult to give a precise date.