Saints Agnes and Domitilla

The two panels are joined by hinges, so the pair closes like a book and can be carried. A diptych of this kind was made for private prayer, in a house, a nun's cell or a small chapel. The gold haloes carry the saints' names, so there is no mistaking them, Saint Agnes the martyr and Saint Domitilla the virgin.

Both belong to the first centuries of Christian Rome. Agnes, by tradition a girl of about 12 or 13, was killed in the persecutions of the early 300s. Domitilla, as her legend tells it, was a noblewoman related to the emperor Domitian, exiled to an island for her faith and later put to death.

In 1913 the panels were described as work in the manner of Orcagna, the leading Florentine painter of Andrea's generation. In 1932 the American connoisseur Bernard Berenson gave them to Andrea di Bonaiuto, and most scholars have followed him, though some see a Sienese collaborator working beside him. The Italian state bought the diptych in 1900 from Santa Maria Nuova, the great Florentine hospital, and sent it straight to the Accademia.