Looks familiar, doesn’t she? But this isn’t our angel over the altar: it’s the original, seven inches high, painted in 1433 by Fra Angelico.
The information that TMC has been passing on for years is that the angels, painted by an artist named Thomas Langan in 1906-07, were copied from the “Liunori Triptych” in the Convent of San Marco in Flo- rence. But Kaki Kriebel, your editor, went all over San Marco last spring looking in vain for the angels. Frustrated, she visited the Free Library Art Department and scoured books on Fra Angelico and San Marco. Finally, on her third trip through one book, the frame of a painting caught her eye. Inside the inner edges of the frame were tiny figures that looked promising.
Another book brought the whole to light. They are from the Linaiuoli Tabernacle (not Liunori Triptych), a painting of the Madonna in a deep-set marble frame sculpted by Ghiberti (of the famous “Gates of Paradise” on the Baptistry in Florence). The tabernacle has two doors, with saints painted on both the inside and outside of the doors. It is probable that these doors were closed during Kaki’s trip to San Marco in order to showcase the saints on the outside—thus hiding the angels.
Art historian and TMC member Roberta Tarbell added more information and slides. This work was Fra Angelico’s only commission from a secular body—the Linen Guild. It is also his first painting that can be firmly dated, to 1433. There are twelve angels in the frame, each seven inches high. We have seven of the twelve—only ours are nine by three feet. There was a lot of work for artist Langan, and he may have used apprentices.
One of the unusual elements of our paintings is the impasto, or thickly molded areas, used to intensify parts of the painting by making them three-dimensional; here it is used for better light reflection on the gilded areas of the wings, halos, and collars. The impastos were probably applied like cake decorations, using tubes filled with a modeling compound and squeezed out, forming the various three-dimensional designs. The wings were probably applied with a large palette knife. Our angels were dedicated on Easter Day, 1907. After years of gathering soot and dust they were restored by Robert L. Williams and were rededicated on Easter Day, March 31, 1982.
Then came the fire in 1994. As, horrified, we watched the church burn, most of us had one thought—we can rebuild everything else, but never the angels! But at last when the he fire was out the firemen let us go up the steps and peek in the door. A scene of total devastation and destruction was in front of us, but there, under the lower unburned part of the roof, the angels glowed unharmed.

The image above is from a slide (courtesy Roberta Tarbell) of the Linauouli Tabernacle in the Museum of San Marco, Florence. The originals of our angels are inside the frame surrounding the Madonna.