An Angel in Green with a Vielle

Francesco Napoletano's Angel in Green with a Vielle in the National Gallery is an exceptionally beautiful fragment from a larger altarpiece, showing a music-making angel playing the vielle — a bowed string instrument — with an expression of absorbed devotion. Angel musician images were common in late fifteenth-century altarpieces, typically flanking the central sacred figures in the so-called Angel Concert tradition. Napoletano, a Milanese painter who worked closely with Leonardo da Vinci, brings unmistakable Leonardesque sfumato and psychological depth to this image, making it one of the most evocative angel figures in the National Gallery's collection.

The angel in green turns slightly, the vielle held at the chest, finger on the strings. Napoletano's Leonardesque training is unmistakable in the soft sfumato modeling of the face and the gentle spiral of the pose. The expression captures absorbed musical devotion with extraordinary psychological subtlety.