Kneeling Angel

This angel, a fragment from a now-lost funerary monument, is a wonderful example of the richness and diversity that characterized sculpture in central France in the second third of the fifteenth century. Iconographically, it is not an angel bearing a coat of arms, such as those on the tomb of John the Fearless, since the position of the hands indicates another typology as seen on the tomb of Philip the Bold and many others, sometimes clearly from a later period, such as on the tombs of the dukes of Brittany in the Cathedral of Nantes. There, angels assist in the obsequies, either as musicians, or, most frequently, by holding the shroud or the pillows upon which the deceased rests.