The Healing of Justinian by Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian

The two saints doing the healing were doctors, and they were also the patron saints of the Medici. Cosimo de' Medici had this whole altarpiece painted for the convent of San Marco in Florence, which he was rebuilding with his own money in these years just after coming back from exile. Putting his name-saints Cosmas and Damian at the centre of the church was a quiet signature. The small scene shows their strangest miracle. The deacon Justinian had a diseased leg, and the saints have cut it off and grafted on in its place the leg of a man who had just died, which is why one of Justinian's legs is a darker colour than the other. Fra Angelico painted it around 1440 as one of a row of little story panels running beneath the main picture.