Cosma di Damiano 's story is intertwined with the history of the nascent new Art, medicine, but also with the history of the Medici family and the city of Florence.
In depictions by Fra Angelico and other artists, they are recognizable by the customary attire befitting their status as doctors: red cassock lined with vaio, red hat trimmed with fur, and red stockings. In one hand, the medicine chest; in the other, the palm of martyrdom.
According to Prof. Fanfani, Blessed Angelico shows how the medical profession began as "relationship medicine" with the figure of the family doctor: medicine was not prescribed, but administered personally, this represented a further strengthening of the close doctor-patient relationship even through the pharmacological vehicle. This feature of medicine would be largely lost with the advancement of specialized organ medicine and technological medicine.
The birth of diagnostic laboratory medicine sees the saints depicted in the act of inspecting against light an ampulla with urine. Illustrating the birth of the surgical aspect , the two saints are depicted, from schools of different backgrounds, in the act of performing the transplantation of the black-colored leg of a Saracen in place of the gangrenous white leg of the deacon Justinian.
Cosimo de' Medici 's winning intuition-Cosmas and Damian were in fact recognized as patron saints of the family-was to use the evocative power of the image as a means of propagating and consolidating the political and social consensus of the household, superimposing his image on the luminous and revered image of Cosmas and Damian. In this way, the Medici family was shown as the best doctor and the best "medicine" for curing the city's political ills.