Two Angels

In Florence a small confraternity of flagellants, the Company of San Vincenzo Ferreri, met at the church of Santa Maria Novella, and Piero di Cosimo painted its altarpiece, the Virgin and Child with Saint Vincent Ferrer and Saint Jerome. These two angels sat in its upper left corner, one holding a lily, the other an open book. At some point the panel was cut down at the top and the corners went their own ways. The main picture, badly worn, reached Yale in 1871. This pair came to Boston in 1894 under the name of a Sienese painter, Girolamo del Pacchia, and somewhere along the way the paint was lifted off its wooden panel and laid onto canvas. Only in the 20th century was it recognised as Piero's. Oddly, the angels from the opposite corner also ended up in Boston, in a church on Beacon Hill, the Church of the Advent, and are now in a private collection. In 2015, at an exhibition of Piero's work in Washington, both pairs were hung again above the Yale altarpiece.