Decorative Border with a Kneeling Flagellant and Saints Michael and Stephen

This fragment comes from the border decoration of a large painting in fresco – a technique that involves painting directly onto wet plaster – which showed the fall of Lucifer, the rebel angel who was cast out of heaven. It once decorated a wall of the church of the confraternity of Sant' Angelo in Arezzo. There are two other fragments in our collection: Saint Michael and Other Angels and Decorative Border with a Seraph and Saint Catherine.The fragment shows two saints in decorative shapes with white borders. The winged saint holding a sword is Michael; the other is Saint Stephen, identifiable by the stone upon his head (he was killed by stoning). Their haloes were originally gilded but now only a tin under-layer remains.The remains of an inscription above the central band refers to a man named Christophanus, a member of the confraternity that commissioned the picture. He might be the small kneeling figure in white at in the centre of the fragment. This figure is a flagellant, a person who practised self-flagellation as a form of spiritual repentance and devotion; he carries a whip in his right hand.