Madonna and Child with Saints Francis, Damian, Cosmas and Anthony of Padua

Cosimo de' Medici was quietly becoming the most powerful man in Florence when he paid for this, around the 1440s, for the novices' chapel at Santa Croce. The choice of saints is not neutral. Cosmas and Damian stand closest to the Virgin, and Cosimo had been named for Cosmas, for they were the family's patron saints. Run your eye up to the frieze and you find the Medici arms, the row of balls, worked into a church wall. Lippi did something new with the format too. Instead of dividing the saints into separate framed compartments in the old manner, he set them together in one continuous space, sharing the same room and light as the Virgin and Child. It is among the first Florentine altarpieces to gather everyone into a single field like this.