Head of an Angel in Left Profile

Taddeo di Bartolo, one of the most prolific Sienese painters of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, created this Head of an Angel in Left Profile around 1397. This fragment likely comes from a larger altarpiece depicting the Madonna, a Coronation of the Virgin, or a celestial scene populated by angelic hosts. Now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this delicate head preserves the refined beauty and lyrical grace that characterized the Sienese school's approach to heavenly figures.

Executed in egg tempera on panel with gold ground, this angel head displays Taddeo di Bartolo's confident brushwork and his mastery of soft, graduated flesh tones in the Sienese manner. The profile format allowed the artist to create an elegantly simplified silhouette, with fine curling hair and a serene expression modeled through delicate tonal transitions.