Angel playing mandolin statue

The mandolin-playing angel descends from the choirs of musical angels painted by Fra Angelico, Botticelli and Hans Memling in the fifteenth century. In their altarpieces, angels appear with the full instruments of the late medieval and Renaissance court — lutes, viols, harps, mandolins — turning paradise into a sustained concert. The mandolin in particular carried associations with intimate, devotional song, and its presence in an angel's hands hints that the music of heaven, though grand, is also tender and near.