La decapitación de los santos Cosme y Damián

This small panel once ran along the base of one of the most important altarpieces of the early Renaissance. Around 1440 Cosimo de' Medici, the banker who effectively ran Florence, paid for a grand altarpiece for the friars' church of San Marco, and he had it filled with Saints Cosmas and Damian, the two physician brothers who were the Medici family's own patron saints, a quiet play on the name Medici, the doctors. Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar himself, told their whole story in little scenes below. In this one the brothers lie bound on the ground as the executioner's sword comes down, watched by richly dressed officials before a wall and a distant fortress. The altarpiece was broken up centuries ago, and its base panels are now scattered across Europe.