Saints Cosmas and Damian at National Gallery of Art

By Nora Hamerman
Special to the HERALD
(From the issue of 9/19/02)

Saints are much like great art in that they endure across the centuries to comfort and uplift through troubled times and different cultures. No one understood this power of the enduring inspiration and beauty of saints and art than Fra Angelico, the devout painter whom Pope John Paul II beatified. We in the Washington area have a unique opportunity at the National Gallery
of Art to experience some of the images of saints that Fra Angelico painted with such depth that they practically leap off the wall to enrich our lives.

One small painting in the National Gallery, "The Healing of Palladia by Saints Cosmas and Damian," by the Blessed Angelico, originated in 1443 at the Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence, where it was one of eight panels in the predella. A predella was a kind of pedestal of the main altarpiece, where supplementary scenes about the saints would be depicted in small format, just as a modern newspaper uses sidebars and boxes.

Pope John Paul II recalls in his book, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," that during his youth, it was while on a tour of the San Marco frescos in Florence that he engaged in a friendly debate with a Muslim over the values of Christian and Muslim art. It was the future Holy Father’s "first taste" of the dialogue between Christianity and Islam that he has continued during his papacy, and one might imagine that it had the blessing of these two saints, who were Arab Christians.

Cosmas and Damian were twin physicians who practiced the art of healing in what is today Syria. They accepted no pay for their services and were called, therefore, "anargyroi," or, "the silverless." They were martyred in Asia Minor under the fierce persecutions of Diocletian, probably in 287. Cosmas and Damian are patron saints of physicians and pharmacists, they are invoked in the Canon of the Mass, and their feast day is Sept. 26.

The "Healing of Palladia" depicts one of the many fables that grew up around the saintly brothers and were compiled by the Dominican friar Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend. Whatever the truth of these miracles (one was a daring transplant operation, impossible in the third century, but almost plausible today), they highlight the Catholic teaching that Christ continues, through the agency of human beings, to work the healing miracles that once marked his earthly ministry.

Palladia was a wealthy matron who insisted on remunerating the saints for curing her.

Fra Angelico divided the scene between two episodes. On the left, an arch opens to show us the darkened room where Palladia is on her sickbed attended by the brothers, each wearing the physician’s red and white biretta. On the right, the cured Palladia stands in the doorway, bestowing a gift on Damian, who accepted it "not out of greed," states the Golden Legend, "but to satisfy the good intentions of the giver."

Highlighting the gift-giving half of the episode against a white wall, Fra Angelico conveys Damian’s ambivalence in subtle body language. While the saint raises one hand in denial, the other hand accepts the gift. Likewise, one foot strides vigorously away, while the other pivots to an awkward stop.

Indeed, the gift caused a rift between the twin saints, because Damian had broken their vow not to take pay. The anger was only healed when Christ visited Cosmas in a dream.

To understand this little picture, we must recall that Fra Angelico was not only a marvelous artist, but also a devout Dominican friar. He belonged to the Observantist movement of the fifteenth century, which was striving to regain the purity and strictness of the founders of the great mendicant orders, Dominican and Franciscan alike.

Angelico was personally familiar with the texts he portrayed. As described by William Hood in the book, "Fra Angelico at San Marco," every year on the feast day of Cosmas and Damian, the friar’s day began with the predawn office of matins. The prescribed readings for matins in the Dominican breviary were taken from the Golden Legend. Fra Angelico used eight of the nine episodes from these readings for the San Marco predella.

The main panel of the altarpiece, still at San Marco, is a "sacred conversation" in which the enthroned Virgin and Child are surrounded by saints in an imagined Paradise filled with the natural loveliness of a garden in full bloom, and the manmade beauties of precious carpets and furnishings. Cosmas and Damian kneel in the foreground of this large, nearly square panel; Cosmas gestures out to the viewer, while Damian, his back turned, remains in rapt contemplation of the divine Child. The predella, including the Washington panel, was scattered when the altarpiece was broken up long ago. Each little panel used a story from the life of Cosmas and Damian to stressed a virtue cherished by the Observant Dominicans.

The Palladia panel, while teaching the virtue of voluntary poverty, also hints at the spiritual concerns of the man who paid for the altarpiece, Cosimo de Medici. Cosmas and Damian had been adopted as patron saints by the Medici, the most powerful family in 15th century Florence, perhaps motivated by a play on words -- the family surname, Medici, means "doctors" in Italian, and Cosimo=Cosmas. It may seem ironic that a family that made its wealth in banking would identify with the "silverless."

Cosimo de Medici richly endowed the monastery over twenty years, under the advice of the pope. Perhaps the Palladia panel was meant as a mild rebuke to those who condemned the Medici for accepting profit from their banking business, since the altarpiece, intended for the welfare of the community, could be interpreted as showing the social benefits of enlightened patronage. It might also have dispelled, by "satisfying the good intentions of the giver," any doubts the Observant Dominicans might have had about accepting such gifts.

Copyright 2002 (c) Arlington Catholic Herald