Adoration of the Angels - Santi Michele e Gaetano Florence

Francesco Boschi’s Adoration of the Angels, painted in the mid-seventeenth century for the Florentine church of Santi Michele e Gaetano, transforms personal grief and civic faith into a radiant vision of redemption. At its center, an oval image of the Virgin and Child is set like a relic within a cloud of angels—infant-like figures who hover in tender adoration. These cherubs, with their soft forms and open gestures, evoke not mere celestial attendants but the transfigured souls of children, the innocenti of Florence’s collective memory.

In Boschi’s composition, theology and empathy intertwine. The artist reimagines the Virgin as both intercessor and mother, receiving the city’s countless lost children into her embrace. The surrounding angels embody a spiritual afterlife for the demographic tragedy that shaped Florentine existence—an age when half of all deaths were those of children, and maternal mortality shadowed every birth. Boschi’s luminous palette and flowing movement translate that human sorrow into an image of eternal consolation: the mortal child made immortal through divine love.

Boschi's angels hover between grief and grace, embodying Florence’s faith that beauty could redeem suffering and that every lost life might find its reflection in light.