Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian Salvaged

Fra Angelico's Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian Salvaged, painted around 1438, depicts the miraculous preservation of the physician-saints from drowning, one of several supernatural rescues in their hagiographic legend. This predella panel from the San Marco altarpiece contributes to the cycle's theme of divine protection of the faithful. 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 maritime scene provides Fra Angelico with an opportunity to paint water and sky, rendered in his characteristic luminous blues with the saints' figures clearly articulated against the seascape background.