Saints Lucy and Agnes

Francesco di Andrea Anguilla was a minor Florentine painter of the early Quattrocento, working in the orbit of the major workshops during the transformative decade of the 1430s when Florentine art was absorbing perspective, humanist theology, and Flemish color technique simultaneously. His Saints Lucy and Agnes — two early Christian martyrs whose virginal sanctity and violent deaths made them central figures of female piety — belongs to the large category of secondary altarpiece panels or polyptych wings that kept the Florentine workshop economy going while the major masters worked on their ambitious projects.

Lucy and Agnes are distinguished by their traditional attributes — Lucy's eyes on a plate or palm, Agnes's lamb — rendered in the descriptive manner of the Florentine workshop tradition. The figure types reflect the prevailing Florentine convention of the 1430s, with the influence of Fra Angelico and Lorenzo Monaco visible in the refined facial types and the careful drapery handling.