Crocifissione dei santi Cosma e Damiano

This little panel was once part of something much bigger. It sat along the base of the great altarpiece Fra Angelico painted around 1440 for the convent of San Marco in Florence, the friary that Cosimo de' Medici was rebuilding at his own expense. Cosimo chose the two saints in the story for a reason: Cosmas and Damian were early Christian physicians, and their name in Italian, medici, doctors, was the Medici family's own. Along the predella Fra Angelico told their legend, including this scene of their execution. Centuries later the altarpiece was taken apart and scattered, and three of its small panels ended up here in Munich. Fra Angelico was himself a friar of San Marco, painting for the walls of his own community.