Head of an Angel in Left Profile

This painting and two others in the Robert Lehman Collection (1975.1.17, 18) are fragments of a monumental altarpiece depicting the Virgin being carried into heaven by a host of angels after her death. The Lehman fragments include the heads of the Virgin (1975.1.18) and two angels (1975.17 and 1975.19). Taddeo di Bartolo was the most important painter in Siena at the turn of the fifteenth century. He worked extensively in his native city as well as in Genoa, Pisa, Rome and elsewhere. This altarpiece to which the Lehman fragments belonged was painted at the end of the artist’s career, perhaps for the Tuscan town of Volterra for which he made several works.