I santi Cosma e Damiano e i loro fratelli davanti al proconsole Lisia

Cosimo de' Medici paid for the great altarpiece this panel once sat beneath, and the choice of saints was personal. Cosmas and Damian were physician brothers, martyred in the early Christian centuries, and Cosmas shared his name with Cosimo. When Fra Angelico built the San Marco altarpiece in Florence around 1443 for the friars' new convent, he lined its base with small scenes of the pair's ordeal. Here the two stand with their brothers before the proconsul Lysias, the Roman judge who has ordered them to worship an idol you can see set up at the right. The set was later broken apart and sold off. This fragment and three of its neighbours ended up in Munich, while the main panel stayed in Florence.