Angel playing the lute

This famous work, with a child angel playing the strings of a lute, is a fragment of a lost altarpiece; Beneath the dark background, added retrospectively, reflectographic studies have revealed part of a building, at the base of which the musical angel would have been in the form of certain compositions by Fra' Bartolomeo or Raphael. The original composition can be inferred from the Sacred Conversation painted around 1600 by Francesco Vanni and located in the church of Sant'Agata ad Asciano in Siena.

Beneath the dark background of this painting in the Uffizi, reflectographic studies have also revealed the name of the artist, Rosso Fiorentino, and the date 1521, but it is not certain whether the writing is Rosso's own or was added when the altarpiece was dismantled in an effort to preserve knowledge of its authorship.

Portraying the very tender image of the angel child seemingly distrustful in his effort to handle the comparatively large lute, this painting is Rosso Fiorentino's original reinterpretation of a traditional subject where the remarkably modern brushstrokes give the work a particularly vivid effect.