Sepulchring of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian

Fra Angelico's Sepulchring of Saints Cosmas and Damian, painted around 1438, concludes the narrative cycle of the Medici patron saints with their burial. The predella series from the San Marco altarpiece represents some of Fra Angelico's finest narrative painting, commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici for the monastery he lavishly rebuilt. Fra Angelico — born Guido di Pietro, known in religion as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole — was a Dominican friar whose painting practice was inseparable from his spiritual vocation. Working primarily for his own order and for Florentine civic and private patrons, he created some of the most luminous and spiritually powerful images in the history of European art.

The burial scene is composed with characteristic serenity, with mourning figures arranged around the saints' bier in a landscape setting painted in Fra Angelico's soft, luminous greens and blues.