LIPPI, Fra Filippo
(b. 1406, Firenze, d. 1469, Spoleto)

Madonna Enthroned with Saints (detail)

c. 1445
Tempera on wood
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The detail shows Sts Francis and Damian. Sts Damian and Cosmas, to whom the chapel in the Santa Croce was dedicated, were the "personal" saints of Cosimo de' Medici. St Damian enacts a standard intercession gesture: he points to the Virgin and Child with one hand, and down with the other, toward a posited supplicant praying before the chapel altar - a position assumed by the beholder.