Spandrel Angels

These angels were once part of a large altarpiece made for the church of Santa Croce, Florence, where Franciscan friars – members of the religious order founded by Saint Francis – had a convent. A Franciscan friar and saint, Louis of Toulouse, was pictured on the main tier.The image of the saint is now lost, but it was framed by a painted arch within a rectangular panel. The gaps on either side of the arch, called spandrels, were filled with these angels. All the spandrel angels have different poses – these two both look down to the image below. They appear to lean on the edge of the arch which once framed the image of Saint Louis, but now frames an empty space.An eighteenth-century drawing shows the altarpiece when it was still in the convent at Santa Croce. The image of Saint Louis of Toulouse was not in bad condition at that time, so it is unclear why the angels were detached from it.Ugolino included similar angels in an altarpiece now in the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. The idea for the design may have come from an altarpiece for San Domenico, Perugia, by the early fourteenth-century painter Duccio.