Angel playing a lute

This small wooden angel plays the lute. It likely animated a religious scene in an altarpiece.

The very small angel was probably taken from a polychrome wooden altarpiece. He wears a robe and a cope with a glass cabochon as a clasp. On the back, the hood has two oblique notches where the little musician’s wings were once attached. He plays the lute, a plucked string instrument. He was probably part of a group of angels celebrating a religious scene.

This small sculpture was donated to the museum in 1891 by Marie Peyrat, Marquise Arconati-Visconti (1840 – 1923), a notable figure in Paris who was a friend of art historians and a patron of numerous institutions.