Virgin of the Angels

This panel is a survivor. Around 1385 it stood at the centre of a large altarpiece in a side chapel of Tortosa cathedral, in Catalonia, and almost all the rest of that structure is now lost. What remains is this middle section and a strip of small saints from the base. The Virgin sits crowned among angels who play instruments, a gentle and much-loved image type of the day. Pere Serra came from a family of painters who between them led Catalan art through the second half of the 14th century, working in the soft, decorative Gothic manner that Barcelona had picked up from Italy.