A Choir of Angels: From Left Hand Shutter

In 1459 a new altarpiece of precious metal was set on the high altar of the abbey of Saint-Bertin at Saint-Omer in northern France, commissioned by its abbot, Guillaume Fillastre. Simon Marmion painted its shutters, which closed over a gilded silver Crucifixion. These angels were the top of the left wing. Beneath them the abbot knelt in prayer inside a Gothic building, and the tip of its roof still shows at the bottom of the panel. Three angels play shawms, an early relative of the oboe, and two more hold a scroll whose notes were never real music. Soon after 1791 the metal centre was destroyed and the wings went to a local baker. By 1822 they were in London, where a dealer cut these tops off, thinking their odd shape would look disagreeable in a gallery. The rest of the shutters is now in Berlin.