ABSTRACT
Music-making and singing angels taking part in the celestial liturgy become fairly common features in late medieval Western imagery. They are closely associated with the Virgin Mary, and often participate in her coronation in Heaven. The depiction of the “cithara angelica” also constitutes a unique composition for the Italian art of the fourteenth century. From the fourteenth century manuscript of the Legenda Maior an almost exact copy was later made in 1457, which is now in the Museo Francescano, Rome. Medieval iconography presents no image of Saint Francis singing the lauds of God or feigning the playing of a vielle, but music is associated with him in different ways, and perhaps to an extent not seen in the iconography of any other saint. A panel painting by Sandro Botticelli that dates from about 1475—a rather early stage in the painter’s career—depicts Saint Francis standing on a marble platform flanked by Music-making angels.
