Janez Šubic became familiar with confessional subject matter already in his father’s workshop, going on to devote all his time under the painter Janez Wolf to thorough studies of religious art. Throughout his life, which he primarily spent abroad, orders from the church kept him connected to his homeland, to which he was extremely attached. He depicted St. Cecilia as the patron saint of church music and musicians in the traditional scene of her playing the organ. The work is a small-format oil sketch, in which Šubic afforded himself a bit of freedom in blurring the figures’ edges and in emphasizing the study of color. He opened the painting’s background with a view through the window to the blue sky with clouds, giving a vivid, direct feel, characteristic of his Roman motifs.
It is known that he stopped in Bologna on his way to Rome to marvel at Raphael’s painting of The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia, a saint closely tied to the city of Rome, where her relics remain. The painting’s purpose remains unknown. The National Gallery houses a graphite sketch of the same motif, leading us to think that the color study was part of a bigger work. Perhaps the painting was produced as part of a commission during Šubič’s time in Vienna, where he received orders for one large and three small paintings, as Celje is home to the only church in Slovenia dedicated to St. Cecilia.