A Choir of Angels: From Left Hand Shutter

Image credit: The National Gallery, London

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These musical angels were originally at the top of the left wing of an elborate altarpiece that sat at the high altar of the Abbey of St Bertin in Saint-Omer, northern France. Beneath them Guillaume Fillastre, abbot of St Bertin and the altarpiece’s commissioner, knelt at prayer inside a Gothic building – you can see its top at the bottom of this panel..

The angels play instruments that look like shawms, a Renaissance forerunner of the oboe. The symbols on the scroll held by the two lower angels are not real musical notation and were never readable. On the back, a Gothic stone canopy is painted in grisaille (shades of black, white and grey).

When the wings of the altarpiece were closed, this panel and its twin, The Soul of Saint Bertin carried up to God, would have covered the gilded silver Crucifixion in the centre of the altarpiece.

The National Gallery, London

London

Title

A Choir of Angels: From Left Hand Shutter

Date

about 1459

Medium

Oil on oak

Measurements

H 57.6 x W 20.9 cm

Accession number

NG1303

Acquisition method

Bought, 1860

Work type

Painting

Normally on display at

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

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