Saints Cosmas and Damian and their Brothers Surviving the Stake

Cosimo de' Medici paid for the great altarpiece this little panel once belonged to, in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, finished around 1443. His choice of saints was pointed. Cosmas and Damian were early Christian physicians, and the family name Medici means doctors, so the two healers doubled as Medici patrons. Here the brothers are tied to a stake, but the flames curl outward and turn on their executioners while the men stand unburned, watched by the baffled governor who ordered it. Fra Angelico was a friar in that same convent, painting its walls and altars. The long predella was later sawn apart and scattered, and this fragment now sits in Dublin, at the National Gallery of Ireland.