The Three Archangels

The person who decided what this altarpiece would show was not the painter and not the usual sort of patron. It was a nun. Arcangela Panigarola was prioress of the Augustinian convent of Santa Marta in Milan, and from 1514 her recorded visions turned on the reform of the church and the coming of an angelic pope, ideas she drew from a prophetic text called the Apocalypsis nova. Armed archangels move through those visions. The picture was painted for the chapel of Saint Michael in her convent, and it puts Michael in the centre with his sword raised over Satan, who is going headfirst into the pit, with Gabriel and Raphael on either side.

The date is about 1516, and Milan was then held by the French. The circle around Santa Marta was tied to French churchmen, among them the brothers Guillaume and Denis Briçonnet, who corresponded with Panigarola for years. Marco d'Oggiono cut his name into the rock at the edge of the chasm where Lucifer falls. The convent was suppressed under Napoleon and the altarpiece came to the Brera in 1806.