The offered painting illustrates the story of Saint Cecilia and Valerian as drawn on from the Medieval manuscript known as the Legenda Aurea or The Golden Legend. In the legend, Cecilia becomes espoused to a young man named Valerian. On the day of her wedding she was adorned in royal robes embroidered with gold and as her wedding approached she sang along with the melody echoing forth from the organ she played praying aloud, “O Lord, I beseech thee that mine heart and body may be undefiled so that I be not confounded.”
The night came that she should go to bed with her husband and when they were both in their chamber alone, she said to him in this manner: “O, my best beloved and sweet husband, I have a counsel to tell thee, if so be that you will keep it secret and swear that ye shall betray it to no man.” Valerian said that he would gladly promise and swear never to betray it, and then she said to him: “I have an angel that loves me, which forever watched over my body whether I sleep or wake, and if he may find that ye touch my body by villainy, or foul and polluted love, certainly he shall slay you, and so should ye lose the flower of your youth. And if so be that you love me in holy love and cleanness, he shall love thee as he loves me and shall show to thee his grace.” Then Valerian, corrected by the will of God, having dread, said to her: “If you wish that I believe that you say to me, show to me that angel that you speak of, and if I find veritable that he be the angel of God, I shall do what you say.” Cecilia answered to him: “If you will believe and become baptized you, too, shall see the angel.
And so forth went Valerian and upon her instructions was baptized by the holy man Urban to whom he reported the words that Cecilia had said, and when he returned home to Saint Cecilia, he found her within her chamber speaking with an angel. And this angel had two crowns of roses and lilies which he held in his hands, of which he gave one to Cecilia, and the other to Valerian, saying: “Keep ye these crowns with an undefiled and clean body, for I have brought them to you from Paradise, and they shall never fade, nor wither, nor lose their savour, nor they may not be seen but of them to whom chastity pleases."
Julian Joseph de Vriendt (1842-1935) was born into a family of artists. He studied both at the Ghent Academy and later at Antwerp. He enjoyed early success in large religious and historical works such as the offered lot. Together with his brother Albrecht, who was also a painter, he traveled to Italy in 1880 and later to Palestine, Syria and Egypt. In October of 1894 he became a Member of Parliament elected as candidate of the Brussels Catholic Flemings. In 1900 he left politics and from 1901-1923 was the Director of the Antwerp Academy.