I. The Angels.
There is something so very attractive and poetical, as well as soothing to our helpless finite nature, in all the superstitions connected with the popular notion of Angels, that we cannot wonder at their prevalence in the early ages of the world. Those nations who acknowledged one Almighty Creator, and repudiated with horror the idea of a plurality of Gods, were the most willing to accept, the most enthusiastic in accepting, these objects of an intermediate homage; and gladly placed between their humanity and the awful supremacy of an unseen God, the ministering spirits who were the agents of his will, the witnesses of his glory, the partakers of his bliss, and who in their preternatural attributes of love and knowledge filled up that vast space in the created universe which intervened between mortal man and the infinite, omnipotent Lord of All.
The belief in these superior beings, dating from immemorial antiquity, interwoven as it should seem with our very nature, and authorised by a variety of passages in Scripture, has descended to our time. Although the bodily forms assigned to them are allowed to be impossible, and merely allegorical, although their supposed functions as rulers of the stars and elements have long been set aside by a knowledge of the natural laws, still the coexistence of many orders of beings superior in nature to ourselves, benignly interested in our welfare, and contending for us against the powers of evil, remains an article of faith. Perhaps the belief itself, and the feeling it excites in the tender and contemplative mind, were never more beautifully expressed than by our own Spenser:—
And is there care in heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is!—else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts! But O th’ exceeding grace
Of highest God that loves his creatures so,
And all his works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed angels he sends to and fro
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe
How oft do they their silver bowers leave,
And come to succour us that succour want?
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant,
Against foul fiends, to aid us militant?
They for its fight, they watch, and duly ward,
And their bright squadrons round about us plant,
And all for love, and nothing for reward!
Oh why should heavenly God to men have such regard!
It is this feeling, expressed or unexpressed, lurking at the very core of all hearts, which renders the usual representations of angels, spite of all incongruities of form, so pleasing to the fancy: we overlook the anatomical solecisms, and become mindful only of that emblematical significance which through its humanity connects it with us, and through its supernatural appendages connects us with heaven.
But it is necessary to give a brief summary of the scriptural and theological authorities, relative to the nature and functions of angels, before we can judge of the manner in which these ideas have been attended to and carried out in the artistic similitudes. Thus angels are represented in the Old Testament—
1. As beings of a higher nature than men, and gifted with superior intelligence and righteousness.[14]
2. As a host of attendants surrounding the throne of God, and as a kind of celestial court or council.[15]
3. As messengers of his will conveyed from heaven to earth: or as sent to guide, to correct, to instruct, to reprove, to console.
4. As protecting the pious.
5. As punishing by command of the Most High the wicked and disobedient.[16]
6. As having the form of men; as eating and drinking.
7. As wielding a sword.
8. As having power to slay.[17]
I do not recollect any instance in which angels are represented in Scripture as instigated by human passions; they are merely the agents of the mercy or the wrath of the Almighty.
After the period of the Captivity, the Jewish ideas concerning angels were considerably extended and modified by an admixture of the Chaldaic belief, and of the doctrines taught by Zoroaster.[18] It is then that we first hear of good and bad angels, and of a fallen angel or impersonation of evil, busy in working mischief on earth and counteracting good; also of archangels, who are alluded to by name; and of guardian angels assigned to nations and individuals; and these foreign ideas concerning the spiritual world, accepted and promulgated by the Jewish doctors, pervade the whole of the New Testament, in which angels are far more familiar to us as agents, more frequently alluded to, and more distinctly brought before us, than in the Old Testament. For example: they are represented—
1. As countless.
2. As superior to all human wants and weaknesses.
3. As the deputed messengers of God.
4. They rejoice over the repentant sinner. They take deep interest in the mission of Christ.
5. They are present with those who pray; they bear the souls of the just to heaven.
6. They minister to Christ on earth, and will be present at his second coming.[19]
In the Gospel of St. John, which is usually regarded as the fullest and most correct exposition of the doctrines of Christ, angels are only three times mentioned, and in none of these instances does the word angel fall from the lips of Christ. On the other hand, the writings of St. Paul, who was deeply versed in all the learning and philosophy of the Jews, abound in allusions to angels, and, according to the usual interpretation of certain passages, he shows them divided into several classes.[20] St. Luke, who was the friend and disciple of St. Paul, some say his convert, is more direct and explicit on the subject of angels than any of the other Evangelists, and his allusions to them much more frequent.
The worship of angels, which the Jews brought from Chaldea, was early introduced into the Christian Church. In the fourth century the council of Laodicea published a decree against places of worship dedicated to angels under names which the Church did not recognise. But neither warning nor council seems to have had power to modify the popular creed, countenanced as it was by high authority. All the Fathers are unanimous as to the existence of angels good and evil. They hold that it is evermore the allotted task of good angels to defend us against evil angels, and to carry on a daily and hourly combat against our spiritual foes: they teach that the good angels are worthy of all reverence as the ministers of God and as the protectors of the human race; that their intercession is to be invoked, and their perpetual, invisible presence to be regarded as an incitement to good and a preventive to evil.
This, however, was not enough. Taking for their foundation a few Scripture texts, and in particular the classification of St. Paul, the imaginative theologians of the middle ages ran into all kinds of extravagant subtleties regarding the being, the nature, and the functions of the different orders of angels. Except as far as they have been taken as authorities in Art, I shall set aside these fanciful disquisitions, of which a mere abstract would fill volumes. For our present purpose it is sufficient to bear in mind that the great theologians divide the angelic host into three hierarchies, and these again into nine choirs, three in each hierarchy: according to Dionysius the Areopagite, in the following order: 1. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. 2. Dominations, Virtues, Powers. 3. Princedoms, Archangels, Angels. The order of these denominations is not the same in all authorities: according to the Greek formula, St. Bernard, and the Legenda Aurea, the Cherubim precede the Seraphim, and in the hymn of St. Ambrose they have also the precedence—To Thee, Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry, &c.; but the authority of St. Dionysius seems to be admitted as paramount, for according to the legend he was the convert and intimate friend of St. Paul, and St. Paul, who had been transported to the seventh heaven, had made him acquainted with all he had there beheld.
Desire
In Dionysius so intensely wrought
That he, as I have done, ranged them, and named
Their orders, marshall’d in his thought;
... For he had learn’d
Both this and much beside of these our orbs
From an eye-witness to Heaven’s mysteries.
Dante, Par. 28.
The first three choirs receive their glory immediately from God, and transmit it to the second; the second illuminate the third; the third are placed in relation to the created universe and man. The first Hierarchy are as councillors; the second as governors; the third as ministers. The Seraphim are absorbed in perpetual love and adoration immediately round the throne of God. The Cherubim know and worship. The Thrones sustain the seat of the Most High. The Dominations, Virtues, Powers, are the Regents of stars and elements. The three last orders, Princedoms, Archangels, and Angels, are the protectors of the great Monarchies on earth, and the executors of the will of God throughout the universe.
The term angels is properly applied to all these celestial beings; but it belongs especially to the two last orders, who are brought into immediate communication with the human race. The word angel, Greek in its origin, signifies a messenger, or more literally a bringer of tidings.
In this sense the Greeks entitle Christ ‘The great Angel of the will of God;’ and I have seen Greek representations of Christ with wings to his shoulders. John the Baptist is also an angel in this sense; likewise the Evangelists; all of whom, as I shall show hereafter, bear, as celestial messengers, the angel-wings.
4 Greek Seraph; wings of gold and crimson (Ninth century)
In ancient pictures and illuminations which exhibit the glorification of the Trinity, Christ, or the Virgin, the hierarchies of angels are represented in circles around them, orb within orb. This is called a glory of angels. In pictures it is seldom complete: instead of nine circles, the painters content themselves with one or two circles only. The innermost circles, the Seraphim and the Cherubim, are in general represented as heads merely, with two or four or six wings, and of a bright-red or blue colour; sometimes with variegated wings, green, yellow, violet, &c. This emblem—intended to shadow forth to human comprehension a pure spirit glowing with love and intelligence, in which all that is bodily is put away, and only the head, the seat of soul, and wings, the attribute of spirit and swiftness, retained—is of Greek origin. When first adopted I do not know, but I have met with it in Greek MSS. of the ninth century. Down to the eleventh century the faces were human, but not childish; the infant head was afterwards adopted to express innocence in addition to love and intelligence.
5 Cherubim, Italian (Fourteenth century)
Such was the expressive and poetical symbol which degenerated in the later periods of Art into those little fat baby heads, with curly hair and small wings under the chin, which the more they resemble nature in colour, feature, and detail, the more absurd they become, the original meaning being wholly lost or perverted.
In painting, where a glory of angels is placed round the Divine Being or the glorified Virgin, those forming the innermost circles are or ought to be of a glowing red, the colour of fire, that is, of love; the next circle is painted blue, the colour of the firmament, or light, that is, of knowledge. Now as the word seraph is derived from a Hebrew root signifying love, and the word cherub from a Hebrew root signifying to know, should not this distinction fix the proper place and name of the first two orders? It is admitted that the spirits which love are nearer to God than those which know, since we cannot know that which we do not first love: that Love and Knowledge, ‘the two halves of a divided world,’ constitute in their union the perfection of the angelic nature; but the Seraphim, according to the derivation of their name, should love most; their whole being is fused, as it were, in a glow of adoration; therefore they should take the precedence, and their proper colour is red. The Cherubim, ‘the lords of those that know,’ come next, and are to be painted blue.
Thus it should seem that, in considering the religious pictures of the early ages of Art, we have to get rid of certain associations as to colour and form, derived from the phraseology of later poets and the representations of later painters. ‘Blue-eyed Seraphim,’ and the ‘blue depth of Seraph’s eyes,’ are not to be thought of any more than smiling Cherubim.’ The Seraphim, where distinguished by colour, are red; the Cherubim blue: the proper character, where character is attended to, is, in the Seraph, adoration; in the Cherub, contemplation. So Milton—
With thee bring
Him who soars on golden wing,
The Cherub, Contemplation.
I remember a little Triptyca, a genuine work of Fiesole, in which one of the lateral compartments represents his favourite subject, the souls of the blessed received into Paradise. They are moving from the lower part of the picture towards the top, along an ascent paved with flowers, all in white garments and crowned with roses. At one side, low down, stands a blue Cherub robed in drapery spangled with golden stars, who seems to encourage the blessed group. Above are the gates of heaven. Christ welcomes to his kingdom the beatified spirits, and on each side stands a Seraph, all of a glowing red, in spangled drapery. The figures are not here merely heads and wings, but full length, having all that soft peculiar grace which belongs to the painter.[21]
In a Coronation of the Virgin,[22] a glory of Seraphim over-arches the principal group. Here the angelic beings are wholly of a bright red colour: they are human to the waist, with hands clasped in devotion: the bodies and arms covered with plumage, but the forms terminating in wings; all uniformly red. In the same collection is a small Greek picture of Christ receiving the soul of the Virgin; over his head hovers a large, fiery-red, six-winged Seraph; and on each side a Seraph with hair and face and limbs of glowing red, and with white draperies. Vasari mentions an Adoration of the Magi by Liberale of Verona, in which a group of angels, all of a red colour, stand as a celestial guard round the Virgin and her divine Infant.[23]
7 Cherubim (Liberale di Verona)
The distinction of hue in the red and blue angels we find wholly omitted towards the end of the fifteenth century. Cherubim with blue, red, green, and variegated wings we find in the pictures of Perugino and other masters in the beginning of the sixteenth century, also in early pictures of Raphael. Liberale di Verona has given us, in a Madonna picture, Cherub heads without wings, and of a blue colour, emerging from golden clouds. And in Raphael’s Madonna di San Sisto the whole background is formed of Cherubim and Seraphim of a uniform delicate bluish tinge, as if composed of air, and melting away into an abyss of golden glory, the principal figures standing relieved against this flood of living love and light—beautiful! So are the Cherubim with many-coloured wings which float in the firmament in Perugino’s Coronation of the Virgin; but none of these can be regarded as so theologically correct as the fiery-red and bright-blue Seraphim and Cherubim, of which are formed the hierarchies and glories which figure in the early pictures, the stained glass, the painted sculpture, and the illuminated MSS. from the tenth to the sixteenth century.
The next five choirs of angels, the Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, though classed and described with great exactitude by the theologians, have not been very accurately discriminated in Art. In some examples the Thrones have green wings, a fiery aureole, and bear a throne in their hands. The Dominations, Virtues, and Powers sometimes bear a globe and a long sceptre surmounted by a cross. The Principalities, according to the Greek formula, should bear a branch of lily. The Archangels are figured as warriors, and carry a sword with the point upwards. The angels are robed as deacons, and carry a wand. In one of the ancient frescoes in the Cathedral at Orvieto, there is a complete hierarchy of angels, so arranged as to symbolise the Trinity, each of the nine choirs being composed of three angels, but the Seraphim only are distinguished by their red colour and priority of place. In the south porch of the Cathedral of Chartres, each of the nine orders is represented by two angels: in other instances, one angel only represents the order to which he belongs, and nine angels represent the whole hierarchy.[24] Where, however, we meet with groups or rows of angels, as in the Greek mosaics and the earliest frescoes all alike, all with the tiara, the long sceptre-like wands, and the orb of sovereignty, I believe these to represent the Powers and Princedoms of Heaven. The Archangels alone, as we shall see presently, have distinct individual names and attributes assigned to them.
8 Part of a Glory of Angels surrounding the figure of Christ in a picture by Ambrogio Borgognone
The angels, generally, have the human form; are winged; and are endowed with immutable happiness and perpetual youth, because they are ever in the presence of Him with whom there is no change and no time. They are direct emanations of the beauty of the Eternal mind, therefore beautiful; created, therefore not eternal, but created perfect, and immortal in their perfection: they are always supposed to be masculine; perhaps for the reason so beautifully assigned by Madame de Staël, ‘because the union of power with purity (la force avec la pureté) constitutes all that we mortals can imagine of perfection.’ There is no such thing as an old angel, and therefore there ought to be no such thing as an infant angel. The introduction of infant angels seems to have arisen from the custom of representing the regenerate souls of men as new-born infants, and perhaps also from the words of our Saviour, when speaking of children: ‘I say unto you, their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.’ Such representations, when religiously and poetically treated as spirits of love, intelligence, and innocence, are of exquisite beauty, and have a significance which charms and elevates the fancy; but from this, the true and religious conception, the Italian putti and puttini, and the rosy chubby babies of the Flemish school, are equally remote.
9 Egyptian winged genius (Louvre)
In early Art, the angels in the bloom of adolescence are always amply draped: at first, in the classical tunic and pallium; afterwards in long linen vestments with the alba and stole, as levites or deacons; or as princes, with embroidered robes and sandals, and jewelled crowns or fillets. Such figures are common in the Byzantine mosaics and pictures. The expression, in these early representations, is usually calm and impassive. Angels partially draped in loose, fluttering, meretricious attire, poised in attitudes upon clouds, or with features animated by human passion, or limbs strained by human effort, are the innovations of more modern Art. White is, or ought to be, the prevailing colour in angelic draperies, but red and blue of various shades are more frequent: green often occurs; and in the Venetian pictures, yellow, or rather saffron-coloured, robes are not unfrequent. In the best examples of Italian Art the tints, though varied, are tender and delicate: all dark heavy colours and violent contrasts of colour are avoided. On the contrary, in the early German school, the angels have rich heavy voluminous draperies of the most intense and vivid colours, often jewelled and embroidered with gold. Flight, in such garments, seems as difficult as it would be to swim in coronation robes.
But, whatever be the treatment as to character, lineaments, or dress, wings are almost invariably the attribute of the angelic form. As emblematical appendages, these are not merely significant of the character of celestial messengers, for, from time immemorial, wings have been the Oriental and Egyptian symbol of power, as well as of swiftness; of the spiritual and aerial, in contradistinction to the human and the earthly. Thus, with the Egyptians, the winged globe signified power and eternity, that is, the Godhead; a bird, with a human head, signified the soul; and nondescript creatures, with wings, abound not only in the Egyptian paintings and hieroglyphics, but also in the Chaldaic and Babylonian remains, in the Lycian and Nineveh marbles, and on the gems and other relics of the Gnostics. I have seen on the Gnostic gems figures with four wings, two springing from the shoulders and two from the loins. This portentous figure, from the ruins of Nineveh, is similarly constructed. (10.)
In Etruscan Art all their divinities are winged; and where Venus is represented with wings, as in many of the antique gems (and by Correggio in imitation of them),[25] these brilliant wings are not, as some have supposed, emblematical of the transitoriness, but of the might, the majesty, and the essential divinity of beauty. In Scripture, the first mention of Cherubim with wings is immediately after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt (Exod. xxxi. 2). Bezaleel, the first artist whose name is recorded in the world’s history, and who appears to have been, like the greatest artists of modern times, at once architect, sculptor, and painter, probably derived his figures of Cherubim with outstretched wings, guarding the mercy-seat, from those Egyptian works of Art with which the Israelites must have been familiarised. Clement of Alexandria is so aware of the relative similitude, that he supposes the Egyptians to have borrowed from the Israelites, which is obviously the reverse of the truth. How far the Cherubim, which figure in the Biblical pictures of the present day, resemble the carved Cherubim of Bezaleel we cannot tell, but probably the idea and the leading forms are the same: for the ark, we know, was carried into Palestine; these original Cherubim were the pattern of those which adorned the temple of Solomon, and these, again, were the prototype after which the imagery of the second temple was fashioned. Although in Scripture the shape under which the celestial ministers appeared to man is nowhere described, except in the visions of the prophets (Dan. x. 5), and there with a sort of dreamy incoherent splendour, rendering it most perilous to clothe the image placed before the fancy in definite forms, still the idea of wings, as the angelic appendages, is conveyed in many places distinctly, and occasionally with a picturesque vividness which inspires and assists the artist. For instance, in Daniel, ch. vii., ‘they had wings like a fowl.’ In Ezekiel, ch.i., ‘their wings were stretched upward when they flew; when they stood, they let down their wings:’ ‘I heard the noise of their wings as the noise of great waters:’ and in Zechariah, ch. v., ‘I looked, and behold there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings, for they had wings like the wings of a stork.’ And Isaiah, ch. vi., in the description of the Seraphim, ‘Each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.’ By the early artists this description was followed out in a manner more conscientious and reverential than poetical.
11 Seraph
(Greek mosaic, Cathedral of Monreale)
They were content with a symbol. But mark how Milton, more daring, could paint from the same original:—
A seraph wing’d; six wings he wore to shade
His lineaments divine: the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold
And colours dipp’d in heaven; the third his feet
Shadow’d from either heel with feather’d mail,
Sky-tinctured grain.
I have sometimes thought that Milton, in his descriptions of angels, was not indebted merely to the notions of the old theological writers, interpreted and embellished by his own fancy: may he not, in his wanderings through Italy, have beheld with kindling sympathy some of those glorious creations of Italian Art, which, when I saw them, made me break out into his own divine language as the only fit utterance to express those forms in words?—But, to return—Is it not a mistake to make the wings, the feathered appendages of the angelic form, as like as possible to real wings—the wings of storks, or the wings of swans, or herons, borrowed for the occasion? Some modern painters, anxious to make wings look ‘natural,’ have done this; Delaroche, for instance, in his St. Cecilia. Infinitely more beautiful and consistent are the nondescript wings which the early painters gave their angels:—large—so large, that when the glorious creature is represented as at rest, they droop from the shoulders to the ground; with long slender feathers, eyed sometimes like the peacock’s train, bedropped with gold like the pheasant’s breast, tinted with azure and violet and crimson, ‘colours dipp’d in heaven,’—they are really angel-wings, not bird-wings.
Orcagna’s angels in the Campo Santo are, in this respect, peculiarly poetical. Their extremities are wings instead of limbs; and in a few of the old Italian and German painters of the fifteenth century we find angels whose extremities are formed of light waving folds of pale rose-coloured or azure drapery, or of a sort of vapoury cloud, or, in some instances, of flames. The cherubim and seraphim which surround the similitude of Jehovah when He appears to Moses in the burning bush,[26] are an example of the sublime and poetical significance which may be given to this kind of treatment. They have heads and human features marvellous for intelligence and beauty; their hair, their wings, their limbs, end in lambent fires; they are ‘celestial Ardours bright,’ which seem to have being without shape.
Dante’s angels have less of dramatic reality, less of the aggrandised and idealised human presence, than Milton’s. They are wondrous creatures. Some of them have the quaint fantastic picturesqueness of old Italian Art and the Albert Dürer school; for instance, those in the Purgatorio, with their wings of a bright green, and their green draperies, ‘verde come fogliette,’ kept in a perpetual state of undulation by the breeze created by the fanning of their wings, with features too dazzling to be distinguished:
Ben discerneva in lor la testa bionda,
Ma nelle facce l’ occhio si smarria
Come virtù ch’ a troppo si confonda.[27]
And the Shape, glowing red as in a furnace, with an air from the fanning of its wings, ‘fresh as the first breath of wind in a May morning, and fragrant as all its flowers.’ That these and other passages scattered through the Purgatorio and the Paradiso assisted the fancy of the earlier painters, in portraying their angelic Glories and winged Beatitudes, I have little doubt; but, on the other hand, the sublime angel in the Inferno—he who comes speeding over the waters with vast pinions like sails, sweeping the evil spirits in heaps before him, ‘like frogs before a serpent,’ and with a touch of his wand making the gates of the city of Dis fly open; then, with a countenance solemn and majestic, and quite unmindful of his worshipper, as one occupied by higher matters, turning and soaring away—this is quite in the sentiment of the grand old Greek and Italian mosaics, which preceded Dante by some centuries.[28]
But besides being the winged messengers of God to man, the deputed regents of the stars, the rulers of the elements, and the dispensers of the fate of nations, angels have another function in which we love to contemplate them. They are the choristers of heaven. Theirs is the privilege to sound that hymn of praise which goes up from this boundless and harmonious universe of suns and stars and worlds and rejoicing creatures, towards the God who created them: theirs is the music of the spheres—
They sing, and singing in their glory move;
they tune divine instruments, named after those of earth’s harmonies—
The harp, the solemn pipe
And dulcimer, all organs of sweet stop,
All sounds on fret by string or golden wire,
... And with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing.
There is nothing more beautiful, more attractive, in Art than the representations of angels in this character. Sometimes they form a chorus round the glorified Saviour, when, after his sorrow and sacrifice on earth, he takes his throne in heaven; or, when the crown is placed on the head of the Maternal Virgin in glory, pour forth their triumphant song, and sound their silver clarions on high: sometimes they stand or kneel before the Madonna and Child, or sit upon the steps of her throne, singing,—with such sweet earnest faces! or playing on their golden lutes, or piping celestial symphonies; or they bend in a choir from the opening heavens above, and welcome, with triumphant songs, the liberated soul of the saint or martyr; or join in St. Cecilia’s hymn of praise: but whatever the scene, in these and similar representations, they appear in their natural place and vocation, and harmonise enchantingly with all our feelings and fancies relative to these angelic beings, made up of love and music.
14 Angel (Francia) 15 Piping Angel (Gian Bellini)
Most beautiful examples of this treatment occur both in early painting and sculpture; and no one who has wandered through churches and galleries, with feeling and observation awake, can fail to remember such. It struck me as characteristic of the Venetian school, that the love of music seemed to combine with the sense of harmony in colour; nowhere have I seen musical angels so frequently and so beautifully introduced: and whereas the angelic choirs of Fiesole, Ghirlandajo, and Raphael, seem to be playing as an act of homage for the delight of the Divine Personages, those of Vivarini and Bellini and Palma appear as if enchanted by their own music; and both together are united in the grand and beautiful angels of Melozzo da Forli, particularly in one who is bending over a lute, and another who with a triumphant and ecstatic expression strikes the cymbals.[29] Compare the cherubic host who are pouring forth their hymns of triumph, blowing their uplifted trumpets, and touching immortal harps and viols in Angelico’s ‘Coronation,’[30] or in Signorelli’s ‘Paradiso,’[31] with those lovely Venetian choristers, the piping boys, myrtle-crowned, who are hymning Bellini’s Madonna,[32] or those who are touching the lute to the praise and glory of St. Ambrose in Vivarini’s most beautiful picture; you will feel immediately the distinction in point of sentiment.
The procession of chanting angels which once surmounted the organ in the Duomo of Florence is a perfect example of musical angels applied to the purpose of decoration. Perhaps it was well to remove this exquisite work of art to a place of safety, where it can be admired and studied as a work of art; but the removal has taken from it the appropriate expression. How they sing!—when the tones of the organ burst forth, we might have fancied we heard their divine voices through the stream of sound! The exquisite little bronze choristers round the high altar of St. Antonio in Padua are another example; Florentine in elegance of form, Venetian in sentiment, intent upon their own sweet song!
There is a third function ascribed to these angelic natures, which brings them even nearer to our sympathies; they are the deputed guardians of the just and innocent. St. Raphael, whose story I shall presently relate, is the prince of the guardian angels. The Jews held that the angels deputed to Lot were his guardian angels.[33] The fathers of the Christian Church taught that every human being, from the hour of his birth to that of his death, is accompanied by an angel appointed to watch over him. The Mahometans give to each of us a good and an evil angel; but the early Christians supposed us to be attended each by a good angel only, who undertakes that office, not merely from duty to God, and out of obedience and great humility, but as inspired by exceeding charity and love towards his human charge. It would require the tongues of angels themselves to recite all that we owe to these benign and vigilant guardians. They watch by the cradle of the new-born babe, and spread their celestial wings round the tottering steps of infancy. If the path of life be difficult and thorny, and evil spirits work its shame and woe, they sustain us; they bear the voice of our complaining, of our supplication, of our repentance, up to the foot of God’s throne, and bring us back in return a pitying benediction, to strengthen and to cheer. When passion and temptation strive for the mastery, they encourage us to resist; when we conquer, they crown us; when we falter and fail, they compassionate and grieve over us; when we are obstinate in polluting our own souls, and perverted not only in act but in will, they leave us—and woe to them that are so left! But the good angel does not quit his charge until his protection is despised, rejected, and utterly repudiated. Wonderful the fervour of their love—wonderful their meekness and patience— who endure from day to day the spectacle of the unveiled human heart with all its miserable weaknesses and vanities, its inordinate desires and selfish purposes! Constant to us in death, they contend against the powers of darkness for the emancipated spirit: they even visit the suffering sinner in purgatory; they keep alive in the tormented spirit faith and hope, and remind him that the term of expiation will end at last. So Dante[34] represents the souls in purgatory as comforted in their misery; and (which has always seemed to me a touch of sublime truth and tenderness) as rejoicing over those who were on earth conspicuous for the very virtues wherein themselves were deficient. When at length the repentant soul is sufficiently purified, the guardian angel bears it to the bosom of the Saviour.
The earlier painters and sculptors did not, apparently, make the same use of guardian angels that we so often meet with in works of Modern Art. Poetical allegories of angels guiding the steps of childhood, extending a shield over innocence, watching by a sick bed, do not, I think, occur before the seventeenth century; at least I have not met with such. The ancient masters, who really believed in the personal agency of our angelic guardians, beheld them with awe and reverence, and reserved their presence for great and solemn occasions. The angel who presents the pious votary to Christ or the Virgin, who crowns St. Cecilia and St. Valerian after their conquest over human weakness; the angel who cleaves the air with flight precipitant’ to break the implements of torture, or to extend the palm to the dying martyr, victorious over pain; the angels who assist and carry in their arms the souls of the just; are, in these and all similar examples, representations of guardian angels.
Such, then, are the three great functions of the angelic host: they are Messengers, Choristers, and Guardians. But angels, without reference to their individuality or their ministry—with regard only to their species and their form, as the most beautiful and the most elevated of created essences, as intermediate between heaven and earth—are introduced into all works of art which have a sacred purpose or character, and must be considered not merely as decorative accessories, but as a kind of presence, as attendant witnesses; and, like the chorus in the Greek tragedies, looking on where they are not actors. In architectural decoration, the cherubim with which Solomon adorned his temple have been the authority and example.[35] ‘Within the oracle he made two cherubims, each ten cubits high, and with wings five cubits in length’ (the angels in the old Christian churches on each side of the altar correspond with these cherubim), ‘and he overlaid the cherubims with gold, and carved all the walls of the house with carved figures of cherubims, and he made doors of olive tree, and he carved on them figures of cherubims.’ So, in Christian art and architecture, angels, with their beautiful cinctured heads and outstretched wings and flowing draperies, fill up every space. The instances are so numerous that they will occur to every one who has given a thought to the subject. I may mention the frieze of angels in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, merely as an example at hand, and which can be referred to at any moment; also the angels round the choir of Lincoln Cathedral, of which there are fine casts in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham; and in some of the old churches in Saxony which clearly exhibit the influence of Byzantine Art—for instance, at Freyberg, Merseburg, Naumburg—angels with outspread wings fill up the spandrils of the arches along the nave.
But, in the best ages of Art, angels were not merely employed as decorative accessories; they had their appropriate place and a solemn significance as a part of that theological system which the edifice, as a whole, represented.
As a celestial host, surrounding the throne of the Trinity; or of Christ, as redeemer or as a judge; or of the Virgin in glory; or the throned Madonna and Child; their place is immediately next to the Divine Personages, and before the Evangelists.
16 Angel bearing the Moon
(Greek, 12th century)
In what is called a Liturgy of Angels, they figure in procession On each side of the choir, so as to have the appearance of approaching the altar: they wear the stole and alba as deacons, and bear the implements of the mass. In the Cathedral of Rheims there is a range of colossal angels as a grand procession along the vaults of the nave, who appear as approaching the altar: these bear not only the gospel, the missal, the sacramental cup, the ewer, the taper, the cross, &c., but also the attributes of sovereignty, celestial and terrestrial: one carries the sun, another the moon, a third the kingly sceptre, a fourth the globe, a fifth the sword; and all these, as they approach the sanctuary, they seem about to place at the feet of Christ, who stands there as priest and king in glory. Statues of angels in an attitude of worship on each side of the altar, as if adoring the sacrifice—or bearing in triumph the instruments of Christ’s passion, the cross, the nails, the spear, the crown of thorns—or carrying tapers—are more common, and must be regarded not merely as decoration, but as a presence in the high solemnity.
In the Cathedral of Auxerre may be seen angels attending on the triumphant coming of Christ; and, which is most singular, they, as well as Christ, are on horseback (17).
When, in subjects from Scripture history, angels figure not merely as attendants and spectators, but as personages necessary to the action, they are either ministers of the divine wrath, or of the divine mercy; agents of destruction, or agents of help and good counsel. As all these instances belong to the historical scenes of the Old or the New Testament, they will be considered separately, and I shall confine myself here to a few remarks on the introduction and treatment of angels in some subjects of peculiar interest.
18 Adam and Eve expelled (N. Pisano)
In relating ‘the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise,’ it is not said that an angel was the immediate agent of the divine wrath, but it is so represented in works of Art. In the most ancient treatment I have met with,[36] a majestic armed angel drives forth the delinquents, and a cherub with six wings stands as guard before the gate. I found the same motif in the sculptures on the façade of the Duomo at Orvieto, by Niccolò Pisano. In another instance, an ancient Saxon miniature, the angel is represented not as driving them forth, but closing the door against them. But these are exceptions to the usual mode of treatment, which seldom varies; the angel is not represented in wrath, but calm, and stretches forth a sword which is often (literally rendering the text) a waving lambent flame. I remember an instance in which the preternatural sword, ‘turning every way,’ as the form of a wheel of flames.
An angel is expressly introduced as a minister of wrath in the story of Balaam, in which I have seen no deviation from the obvious prosaic treatment, rendering the text literally, ‘and the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand.’
‘The destroying angel, leaning from heaven, presents to David three arrows, from which to choose—war, pestilence, or famine.’ I have found this subject beautifully executed in several MSS., for instance, in the ‘Heures d’Anne de Bretagne;’ also in pictures and in prints.
‘The destroying angel sent to chastise the arrogance of David, is beheld standing between heaven and earth with his sword stretched over Jerusalem to destroy it.’ Of this sublime vision I have never seen any but the meanest representations; none of the great masters have treated it; perhaps Rembrandt might have given us the terrible and glorious angel standing like a shadow in the midst of his own intense irradiation. David fallen on his face, and the sons of Ornan hiding themselves by their rude threshing-floor, with that wild mixture of the familiar and the unearthly in which he alone has succeeded.
‘The Chastisement of Heliodorus’ has given occasion to the sublimest composition in which human genius ever attempted to embody the conception of the supernatural—Raphael’s fresco in the Vatican. St. Michael, the protecting angel of the Hebrew nation, is supposed to have been the minister of divine wrath on this occasion; but Raphael, in omitting the wings, and all exaggeration or alteration of the human figure, has shown how unnecessary it was for him to have recourse to the prodigious and impossible in form, in order to give the supernatural in sentiment. The unearthly warrior and his unearthly steed—the weapon in his hand, which is not a sword to pierce, nor a club to strike, but a sort of mace, of which, as it seems, a touch would annihilate; the two attendant spirits, who come gliding above the marble floor, with their hair streaming back with the rapidity of their aërial motion—are in the very spirit of Dante, and, as conceptions of superhuman power, superior to anything in pictured form which Art has bequeathed to us.
In calling to mind the various representations of the angels of the Apocalypse let loose for destruction, one is tempted to exclaim, ‘O for a warning voice!’ When the Muse of Milton quailed, and fell ten thousand fathom deep into Bathos, what could be expected from human invention? In general, where this subject is attempted in pictures, we find the angels animated, like those of Milton in the war of heaven, with ‘fierce desire of battle,’ breathing vengeance, wrath, and fury. So Albert Dürer, in those wonderful scenes of his ‘Apocalypse,’ has exhibited them; but some of the early Italians show them merely impassive, conquering almost without effort, punishing without anger. The immediate instruments of the wrath of God in the day of judgment are not angels, but devils or demons, generally represented by the old painters with every possible exaggeration of hideousness, and as taking a horrible and grotesque delight in their task. The demons are fallen angels, their deformity a consequence of their fall. Thus, in some very ancient representations of the expulsion of Lucifer and his rebel host, the degradation of the form increases with their distance from heaven.[37] Those who are uppermost are still angels; they bear the aureole, the wings, and the tunic; they have not yet lost all their original brightness: those below them begin to assume the bestial form: the fingers become talons, the heads become horned; and at last, as they touch the confines of the gulf of hell, the transformation is seen complete, from the luminous angel into the abominable and monstrous devil, with serpent tail, claws, bristles, and tusks. This gradual transformation, as they descend into the gulf of sin, has a striking allegorical significance which cannot escape the reader. In a Greek MS. of the ninth century,[38] bearing singular traces of antique classical art in the conception and attributes of the figures, I found both angels and demons treated in a style quite peculiar and poetical. The angels are here gigantic, majestic, Jove-like figures, with great wings. The demons are also majestic graceful winged figures, but painted of a dusky grey colour (it may originally have been black). In one scene, where Julian the Apostate goes to seek the heathen divinities, they are thus represented, that is, as black angels; showing that the painter had here assumed the devils or demons to be the discrowned and fallen gods of the antique world.
These are a few of the most striking instances of angels employed as ministers of wrath. Angels, as ministers of divine grace and mercy,
Of all those arts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.
occur much more frequently.
The ancient heresy that God made use of the agency of angels in the creation of the world, and of mankind, I must notice here, because it has found its way into Art; for example, in an old miniature which represents an angel having before him a lump of clay, a kind of ébauche of humanity, which he appears to be moulding with his hands, while the Almighty stands by directing the work.[39] This idea, absurd as it may appear, is not perhaps more absurd than the notion of those who would represent the Great First Cause as always busied in fashioning or altering the forms in his visible creation, like a potter or any other mechanic. But as we are occupied at present with the scriptural, not the legendary subjects, I return to the Old Testament. The first time that we read of an angel sent as a messenger of mercy, it is for the comfort of poor Hagar; when he found her weeping by the spring of water in the wilderness, because her mistress had afflicted her: and again, when she was cast forth and her boy fainted for thirst. In the representation of these subjects, I do not know a single instance in which the usual angelic form has not been adhered to. In the sacrifice of Isaac, ‘the angel of the Lord calls to Abraham out of heaven.’ This subject, as the received type of the sacrifice of the Son of God, was one of the earliest in Christian Art. We find it on the sarcophagi of the third and fourth centuries; but in one of the latest only have I seen a personage introduced as staying the hand of Abraham, and this personage is without wings. In painting, the angel is sometimes in the act of taking the sword out of Abraham’s hand, which expresses the nature of his message: or he lays one hand on his arm, and with the other points to the ram which was to replace the sacrifice, or brings the ram in his arms to the altar; but, whatever the action, the form of the angelic messenger has never varied from the sixth century.
19 The Angels who visit Abraham (Raphael)
In the visit of the angels to Abraham, there has been a variety caused by the wording of the text. It is not said that three angels visited Abraham, yet in most of the ancient representations the three celestial guests are, winged angels. I need hardly observe that these three angels are assumed to be a figure of the Trinity, and in some old illuminations the interpretation is not left doubtful, the angels being characterised as the three persons of the Trinity, wearing each the cruciform nimbus: two of them, young and beardless, stand behind; the third, representing the Father, has a beard, and, before Him, Abraham is prostrated. Beautiful for grace and simplicity is the winged group by Ghiberti, in which the three seem to step and move together as one. More modern artists have given us the celestial visitants merely as men. Pre-eminent in this style of conception are the pictures of Raphael and Murillo. Raphael here, as elsewhere, a true poet, has succeeded in conveying, with exquisite felicity, the sentiment of power, of a heavenly presence, and of a mysterious significance. The three youths, who stand linked together hand in hand before the Patriarch, with such an air of benign and superior grace, want no wings to show us that they belong to the courts of heaven, and have but just descended to earth—
So lively shines
In them divine resemblance, and such grace
The hand that form’d them on their shape hath pour’d.
Murillo, on the contrary, gives us merely three young men, travellers, and has set aside wholly both the angelic and the mystic character of the visitants.[40]
The angels who descend and ascend the ladder in Jacob’s dream are in almost every instance represented in the usual form; sometimes a few[41]—sometimes in multitudes[42]—sometimes as one only, who turns to bless the sleeper before he ascends;[43] and the ladder is sometimes a flight, or a series of flights, of steps ascending from earth to the empyrean. But here it is Rembrandt who has shown himself the poet; the ladder is a slanting stream of light; the angels are mysterious bird-like luminous forms, which emerge one after another from a dazzling fount of glory, and go floating up and down,—so like a dream made visible!—In Middle-Age Art this vision of Jacob occurs very rarely. I shall have to return to it when treating of the subjects from the Old Testament.
In the New Testament angels are much more frequently alluded to than in the Old; more as a reality, less as a vision; in fact, there is no important event throughout the Gospels and Acts in which angels do not appear, either as immediate agents, or as visible and present; and in scenes where they are not distinctly said to be visibly present, they are assumed to be so invisibly, St. Paul having said expressly that ‘their ministry is continual.’ It is therefore with undeniable propriety that, in works of Art representing the incidents of the Gospels, angels should figure as a perpetual presence, made visible under such forms as custom and tradition have consecrated.
I pass over, for the present, the grandest, the most important mission of an angel, the announcement brought by Gabriel to the blessed Virgin. I shall have to treat it fully hereafter.[44] The angel who appears to Joseph in a dream, and the angel who commands him to flee into Egypt, was in both cases probably the same angel who hailed Mary as blessed above all women; but we are not told so; and according to some commentators it was the guardian angel of Joseph who appeared to him. In these and other scenes of the New Testament, in which angels are described as direct agents, or merely as a chorus of ministering attendants, they have the usual form, enhanced by as much beauty, and benignity, and aërial grace as the fancy of the artist could bestow on them. In the Nativity they are seen hovering on high, pouring forth their song of triumph; they hold a scroll in their hands on which their song is written: in general there are three angels; the first sings, Gloria in excelsis Deo! the second, Et in terra pax! the third, Hominibus bonæ voluntatis! but in some pictures the three angels are replaced by a numerous choir, who raise the song of triumph in the skies, while others are seen kneeling round and adoring the Divine Infant.
The happiest, the most beautiful, instance I can remember of this particular treatment is the little chapel in the Riccardi Palace at Florence. This chapel is in the form of a Greek cross, and the frescoes are thus disposed:—
The walls 1, 2, and 3, are painted with the journey of the Wise Men, who, with a long train of attendants mounted on horseback and gorgeously apparelled, are seen travelling over hill and dale led by the guiding star. Over the altar was the Nativity (now removed); on each side (4, 5) is seen a choir of angels, perhaps fifty in number, rejoicing over the birth of the Redeemer: some kneel in adoration, with arms folded over the bosom, others offer flowers; some come dancing forward with flowers in their hands or in the lap of their robe; others sing and make celestial music: they have glories round their heads, all inscribed alike, ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo!’ The naïve grace, the beautiful devout expression, the airy movements of these lovely beings, melt the soul to harmony and joy. The chapel having been long shut up, and its existence scarcely remembered, these paintings are in excellent preservation; and I saw nothing in Italy that more impressed me with admiration of the genuine feeling and piety of the old masters. The choral angels of Angelico da Fiesole already described are not more pure in sentiment, and are far less animated, than these.[45]
But how different from both is the ministry of the angels in some of the pictures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both German and Italian! The Virgin Mary is washing her Divine Infant; angels dry the clothes, or pour out water: Joseph is planing a board, and angels assist the Infant Saviour in sweeping up the chips. In a beautiful little Madonna and Child, in Prince Wallerstein’s collection, an angel is playing with the Divine Infant, is literally his play-fellow; a very graceful idea, of which I have seen but this one instance.
In the Flight into Egypt, an angel often leads the ass. In the Riposo, a subject rare before the fifteenth century, angels offer fruit and flowers, or bend down the branches of the date tree, that Joseph may gather the fruit; or weave the choral dance, hand in hand, for the delight of the Infant Christ, while others make celestial music—as in Vandyck’s beautiful picture in Lord Ashburton’s collection. After the Temptation, they minister to the Saviour in the wilderness, and spread for him a table of refreshment—
... celestial food divine,
Ambrosial fruit, fetch’d from the tree of life,
And from the fount of life ambrosial drink.
It is not said that angels were visibly present at the baptism of Christ; but it appears to me that they ought not therefore to be supposed absent, and that there is a propriety in making them attendants on this solemn occasion. They are not introduced in the very earliest examples, those in the catacombs and sarcophagi; nor yet in the mosaics of Ravenna; because angels were then rarely figured, and instead of the winged angel we have the sedge-crowned river god, representing the Jordan. In the Greek formula, they are required to be present ‘in an attitude of respect:’ no mention is made of their holding the garments of our Saviour; but it is certain that in Byzantine Art, and generally from the twelfth century, this has been the usual mode of representing them. According to the Fathers, our Saviour had no guardian angel; because he did not require one: notwithstanding the sense usually given to the text, ‘He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone,’ the angels, they affirm, were not the guardians, but the servants, of Christ; and hence, I presume, the custom of representing them, not merely as present, but as ministering to him during his baptism. The gates of San Paolo (tenth century) afford the most ancient example I have met with of an angel holding the raiment of the Saviour: there is only one angel. Giotto introduces two graceful angels kneeling on the bank of the river, and looking on with attention. The angel in Raphael’s composition bows his head, as if awe-struck by the divine recognition of the majesty of the Redeemer; and the reverent manner in which he holds the vestment is very beautiful. Other examples will here suggest themselves to the reader, and I shall resume the subject when treating of the life of our Saviour.
In one account of our Saviour’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane, it is expressly said that an angel ‘appeared unto him out of heaven, strengthening him;’ therefore, where this awful and pathetic subject has been attempted in Art, there is propriety in introducing a visible angel. Notwithstanding the latitude thus allowed to the imagination, or perhaps for that very reason, the greatest and the most intelligent painters have here fallen into strange errors, both in conception and in taste. For instance, is it not a manifest impropriety to take the Scripture phrase in a literal sense, and place a cup in the hand of the angel? Is not the word cup here, as elsewhere, used as a metaphor, signifying the destiny awarded by Divine will, as Christ had said before, ‘Ye shall drink of my cup,’ and as we say, ‘his cup overfloweth with blessings’? The angel, therefore, who does not bend from heaven to announce to him the decree he knew full well, nor to present the cup of bitterness, but to strengthen and comfort him, should not bear the cup;—still less the cross, the scourge, the crown of thorns, as in many pictures.
Where our Saviour appears bowed to the earth, prostrate, half swooning with the anguish of that dread moment, and an angel is seen sustaining him, there is a true feeling of the real meaning of Scripture; but even in such examples the effect is often spoiled by an attempt to render the scene at once more mystical and more palpable. Thus a painter equally remarkable for the purity of his taste and deep religious feeling, Niccolò Poussin, has represented Christ, in his agony, supported in the arms of an angel, while a crowd of child-angels, very much like Cupids, appear before him with the instruments of the Passion; ten or twelve bear a huge cross; others hold the scourge, the crown of thorns, the nails, the sponge, the spear, and exhibit them before him, as if these were the images, these the terrors, which could overwhelm with fear and anguish even the human nature of such a Being![46] It seems to me also a mistake, when the angel is introduced, to make him merely an accessory (as Raphael has done in one of his early pictures), a little figure in the air to help the meaning: since the occasion was worthy of angelic intervention, in a visible shape, bringing divine solace, divine sympathy, it should be represented under a form the most mighty and the most benign that Art could compass;—but has it been so? I can recollect no instance in which the failure has not been complete. If it be said that to render the angelic comforter so superior to the sorrowing and prostrate Redeemer would be to detract from His dignity as the principal personage of the scene, and thus violate one of the first rules of Art, I think differently—I think it could do so only in unskilful hands. Represented as it ought to be, and might be, it would infinitely enhance the idea of that unimaginable anguish which, as we are told, was compounded of the iniquities and sorrows of all humanity laid upon Him. It was not the pang of the Mortal, but the Immortal, which required the presence of a ministering spirit sent down from heaven to sustain him.
21 Lamenting Angel in a Crucifixion (Campo Santo)
In the Crucifixion, angels are seen lamenting, wringing their hands, averting or hiding their faces. In the old Greek crucifixions, one angel bears the sun, another the moon, on each side of the cross:—
... dim sadness did not spare,
That time, celestial visages.
Michael Angelo gives us two unwinged colossal-looking angel heads, which peer out of heaven in the background of his Crucifixion in a manner truly supernatural, as if they sympathised in the consummation, but in awe rather than in grief.
Angels also receive in golden cups the blood which flows from the wounds of our Saviour. This is a representation which has the authority of some of the most distinguished and most spiritual among the old painters, but it is to my taste particularly unpleasing and unpoetical. Raphael, in an early picture, the only crucifixion he ever painted, thus introduces the angels; and this form of the angelic ministry is a mystical version of the sacrifice of the Redeemer not uncommon in Italian and German pictures of the sixteenth century.
As the scriptural and legendary scenes in which angels form the poetical machinery will be discussed hereafter in detail as separate subjects, I shall conclude these general and preliminary remarks with a few words on the characteristic style in which the principal painters have set forth the angelic forms and attributes.
It appears that, previous to the end of the fourth century, there were religious scruples which forbade the representation of angels, arising perhaps from the scandal caused in the early Church by the worship paid to these supernatural beings, and so strongly opposed by the primitive teachers. We do not find on any of the Christian relics of the first three centuries, neither in the catacombs, nor on the vases or the sarcophagi, any figure which could be supposed to represent what we call an angel. On one of the latest sarcophagi we find little winged figures, but evidently the classical winged genii, used in the classical manner as ornament only.[47] In the second council of Nice, John of Thessalonica maintained that angels have the human form, and may be so represented; and the Jewish doctors had previously decided that God consulted his angels when He said, ‘Let us make man after our image,’ and that consequently we may suppose the angels to be like men, or, in the words of the prophet, ‘like unto the similitude of the sons of men.’[48] (Dan. x. 16.)
But it is evident that, in the first attempt at angelic effigy, it was deemed necessary, in giving the human shape, to render it as superhuman, as imposing, as possible: colossal proportions, mighty overshadowing wings, kingly attributes, these we find in the earliest figures of angels which I believe exist—the mosaics in the church of Santa Agata at Ravenna (A.D. 400). Christ is seated on a throne (as in the early sarcophagi): he holds the Gospel in one hand, and with the left gives the benediction. An angel stands on each side: they have large wings, and bear a silver wand, the long sceptre of the Grecian kings; they are robed in classical drapery, but wear the short pallium (the ‘garb succinct for flight’); their feet are sandaled, as prepared for a journey, and their hair bound by a fillet. Except in the wings and short pallium, they resemble the figures of Grecian kings and priests in the ancient bas-reliefs.
22 Angel (Greek MSS., ninth century)
This was the truly majestic idea of an angelic presence (in contradistinction to the angelic emblem), which, well or ill executed, prevailed during the first ten centuries. In the MS.[49] already referred to as containing such magnificent examples of this God-like form and bearing, I selected one group less ruined than most of the others; Jacob wrestling with the angel. The drawing is wonderful for the period, that of Charlemagne; and see how the mighty Being grasps the puny mortal, who was permitted for a while to resist him!—‘He touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and it was out of joint’—the action is as significant as possible. In the original, the drapery of the angel is white; the fillet binding the hair, the sandals, and the wings, of purple and gold.
This lank, formal angel is from the Greco-Italian school of the eleventh century. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the forms of the angels became, like all things in the then degraded state of Byzantine Art, merely conventional. They are attired either in the imperial or the sacerdotal vestments, as already described, and are richly ornamented, tasteless and stiff, large without grandeur, and in general ill drawn: as in these figures from Monreale (24).
24 Greek Angels (Cathedral of Monreale. Eleventh century)
On the revival of Art, we find the Byzantine idea of angels everywhere prevailing. The angels in Cimabue’s famous ‘Virgin and Child enthroned’ are grand creatures, rather stern; but this arose, I think, from his inability to express beauty. The colossal angels at Assisi (A.D. 1270), solemn sceptred kingly forms, all alike in action and attitude, appeared to me magnificent (30).
In the angels of Giotto (A.D. 1310) we see the commencement of a softer grace and a purer taste, further developed by some of his scholars. Benozzo Gozzoli and Orcagna have left in the Campo Santo examples of the most graceful and fanciful treatment. Of Benozzo’s angels in the Riccardi palace I have spoken at length. His master Angelico (worthy the name!) never reached the same power of expressing the rapturous rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable (A.D. 1430); it is only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there. Angelico’s angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would become feeble and insipid. With their long robes falling round their feet, and drooping many-coloured wings, they seem not to fly or to walk, but to float along, ‘smooth sliding without step.’ Blessed, blessed creatures! love us, only love us—for we dare not task your soft serene Beatitude by asking you to help us!
There is more sympathy with humanity in Francia’s angels: they look as if they could weep, as well as love and sing.
Most beautiful are the groups of adoring angels by Francesco Granacci,[50] so serenely tender, yet with a touch of grave earnestness which gives them a character apart: they have the air of guardian angels, who have discharged their trust, and to whom the Supreme utterance has voiced forth, ‘Servant of God, well done!’
The angels of Botticelli are often stiff, and those of Ghirlandajo sometimes fantastic; but in both I have met with angelic countenances and forms which, for intense and happy expression, can never be forgotten. One has the feeling, however, that they used human models—the portrait face looks through the angel face. This is still more apparent in Mantegna and Filippo Lippi. As we might have expected from the character of Fra Filippo, his angels want refinement: they have a boyish look, with their crisp curled hair, and their bold beauty; yet some of them are magnificent for that sort of angel-beings supposed to have a volition of their own. Andrea del Sarto’s angels have the same fault in a less degree: they have, if not a bold, yet a self-willed boyish expression.
Perugino’s angels convey the idea of an unalterable sweetness: those of his earlier time have much natural grace, those of his later time are mannered. In early Venetian Art the angels are charming: they are happy affectionate beings, with a touch of that voluptuous sentiment, afterwards the characteristic of the Venetian school.
In the contemporary German school, angels are treated in a very extraordinary and original style (26). one cannot say that they are earthly, or commonplace, still less are they beautiful or divine; but they have great simplicity, earnestness, and energy of action. They appear to me conceived in the Old Testament spirit, with their grand stiff massive draperies, their jewelled and golden glories, their wings ‘eyed like the peacock, speckled like the pard,’ their intense expression, and the sort of personal and passionate interest they throw into their ministry. This is the character of Albert Dürer’s angels especially; those of Martin Schoen and Lucus v. Leyden are of a gentler spirit.
Leonardo da Vinci’s angels do not quite please me, elegant, refined, and lovely as they are:—‘methinks they smile too much.’ By his scholar Luini there are some angels in the gallery of the Brera, swinging censers and playing on musical instruments, which, with the peculiar character of the Milanese school, combine all the grace of a purer, loftier nature.
Correggio’s angels are grand and lovely, but they are like children enlarged and sublimated, not like spirits taking the form of children: where they smile it is truly, as Annibal Caracci expresses it, ‘con una naturalezza e semplicità che innamora e sforza a ridere con loro;’ but the smile in many of Correggio’s angel heads has something sublime and spiritual, as well as simple and natural.
26 Angel. German School. (Albert Dürer)
And Titian’s angels impress me in a similar manner—I mean those in the glorious Assumption at Venice—with their childish forms and features, but with an expression caught from beholding the face of ‘our Father that is in heaven:’ it is glorified infancy. I remember standing before this picture, contemplating those lovely spirits one after another, until a thrill came over me like that which I felt when Mendelssohn played the organ, and I became music while I listened. The face of one of those angels is to the face of a child just what that of the Virgin in the same picture is compared with the fairest of the daughters of earth: it is not here superiority of beauty, but mind and music and love, kneaded, as it were, into form and colour.
I have thought it singular and somewhat unaccountable, that among the earliest examples of undraped boy-angels are those of Fra Bartolomeo—he who on one occasion, at the command of Savonarola, made a bonfire of all the undressed figures he could lay his hands on.
But Raphael, excelling in all things, is here excellent above all: his angels combine, in a higher degree than any other, the various faculties and attributes in which the fancy loves to clothe these pure, immortal, beatified creatures. The angels of Giotto, of Benozzo, of Fiesole, are, if not female, feminine; those of Lippi, and of A. Mantegna, masculine; but you cannot say of those of Raphael that they are masculine or feminine. The idea of sex is wholly lost in the blending of power, intelligence, and grace. In his earlier pictures grace is the predominant characteristic, as in the dancing and singing angels in his Coronation of the Virgin.[51] In his later pictures the sentiment in his ministering angels is more spiritual, more dignified. As a perfect example of grand and poetical feeling, I may cite the angels as ‘Regents of the Planets,’ in the Capella Chigiana.[52] The cupola represents in a circle the creation of the solar system, according to the theological and astronomical (or rather astrological) notions which then prevailed—a hundred years before ‘the starry Galileo and his woes.’ In the centre is the Creator; around, in eight compartments, we have, first, the angel of the celestial sphere, who seems to be listening to the divine mandate, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven;’ then follow, in their order, the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The name of each planet is expressed by its mythological representative; the Sun by Apollo, the Moon by Diana: and over each presides a grand colossal winged spirit seated or reclining on a portion of the zodiac as on a throne. I have selected two angels to give an idea of this peculiar and poetical treatment. The union of the theological and the mythological attributes is in the classical taste of the time, and quite Miltonic.[53] In Raphael’s child-angels, the expression of power and intelligence, as well as innocence, is quite wonderful; for instance, look at the two angel-boys in the Dresden Madonna di San Sisto, and the angels, or celestial genii, who bear along the Almighty when He appears to Noah.[54] No one has expressed like Raphael the action of flight, except perhaps Rembrandt. The angel who descends to crown Santa Felicità cleaves the air with the action of a swallow;[55] and the angel in Rembrandt’s Tobit soars like a lark with upward motion, spurning the earth.
Angels of the Planets from the Capella Chigi.
Michael Angelo rarely gave wings to his angels; I scarcely recollect an instance, except the angel in the Annunciation: and his exaggerated human forms, his colossal creatures, in which the idea of power is conveyed through attitude and muscular action, are, to my taste, worse than unpleasing. My admiration for this wonderful man is so profound that I can afford to say this. His angels are superhuman, but hardly angelic: and while in Raphael’s angels we do not feel the want of wings, we feel while looking at those of Michael Angelo that not even the ‘sail-broad vans’ with which Satan laboured through the surging abyss of chaos could suffice to lift those Titanic forms from earth, and sustain them in mid-air. The group of angels over the Last Judgment, flinging their mighty limbs about, and those that surround the descending figure of Christ in the Conversion of St. Paul, may be referred to here as characteristic examples. The angels, blowing their trumpets, puff and strain like so many troopers. Surely this is not angelic: there may be power, great imaginative and artistic power, exhibited in the conception of form, but in the beings themselves there is more of effort than of power: serenity, tranquillity, beatitude, ethereal purity, spiritual grace, are out of the question.
The later followers of his school, in their angelic as in their human forms, caricatured their great master, and became, to an offensive degree, forced, extravagant, and sensual.
When we come to the revival of a better taste under the influence of the Caracci, we find the angels of that school as far removed from the early Christian types as were their apostles and martyrs. They have often great beauty, consummate elegance, but bear the same relation to the religious and ethereal types of the early painters that the angels of Tasso bear to those of Dante. Turn, for instance, to the commencement of the Gerusalemme Liberata, where the angel is deputed to carry to Godfrey the behest of the Supreme Being. The picture of the angel is distinctly and poetically brought before us; he takes to himself a form between boyhood and youth; his waving curls are crowned with beams of light; he puts on a pair of wings of silver tipped with gold, with which he cleaves the air, the clouds, the skies; he alights on Mount Lebanon, and poises himself on his balanced wings—
E si librò su l’ adeguate penne.
This is exactly the angel which figures in the best pictures of the Caracci and Guido: he is supremely elegant, and nothing more.
I must not here venture on minute criticism, as regards distinctive character in the crowds of painters which sprung out of the eclectic school. It would carry us too far; but one or two general remarks will lead the reader’s fancy along the path I would wish him to pursue. I would say, therefore, that the angels of Ludovico have more of sentiment, those of Annibal more of power, those of Guido more of grace: and of Guido it may be said that he excels them all in the expression of adoration and humility; see, for instance, the adoring seraphs in Lord Ellesmere’s ‘Immaculate Conception.’ The angels of Domenichino, Guercino, and Albano, are to me less pleasing. Domenichino’s angels are merely human. I never saw an angel in one of Guercino’s pictures that had not, with the merely human character, a touch of vulgarity. As for Albano, how are we to discriminate between his angels and his nymphs, Apollos, and Cupids? But for the occasion and the appellation, it would be quite impossible to distinguish the Loves that sport round Venus and Adonis, from the Cherubim, so called, that hover above a Nativity or a Riposo; and the little angels, in his Crucifixion, cry so like naughty little boys, that one longs to put them in a corner. This merely heathen grace and merely human sentiment is the general tendency of the whole school; and no beauty of form or colour can, to the feeling and religious mind, redeem such gross violations of propriety. As for Poussin, of whom I think with due reverence, his angels are often exquisitely beautiful and refined: they have a chastity and a moral grace which pleases at first view; but here again the scriptural type is neglected and heathenised in obedience to the fashion of the time. If we compare the Cupids in his Rinaldo and Armida, with the angels which minister to the Virgin and Child; or the Cherubim weeping in a Deposition, with the Amorini who are lamenting over Adonis; in what respect do they differ? They are evidently painted from the same models, the beautiful children of Titian and Fiamingo.
27 Angels in a Nativity (Seventeenth century)
28 Angel: in a picture of Christ healing the Sick (N. Poussin)
Rubens gives us strong well-built youths, with redundant yellow hair; and chubby naked babies, as like flesh and blood, and as natural, as the life: and those of Vandyck are more elegant, without being more angelic. Murillo’s child-angels are divine, through absolute beauty; the expression of innocence and beatitude was never more perfectly given; but in grandeur and power they are inferior to Correggio, and in all that should characterise a divine nature, immeasurably below Raphael.
Strange to say, the most poetical painter of angels in the seventeenth century is that inspired Dutchman, Rembrandt; not that his angels are scriptural; still less classical; and beautiful they are not, certainly—often the reverse; but if they have not the Miltonic dignity and grace, they are at least as unearthly and as poetical as any of the angelic phantasms in Dante,—unhuman, unembodied creatures, compounded of light and darkness, ‘the somewhat between a thought and a thing,’ haunting the memory like apparitions. For instance, look at his Jacob’s Dream, at Dulwich; or his etching of the Angels appearing to the Shepherds,—breaking through the night, scattering the gloom, making our eyes ache with excess of glory,—the Gloria in excelsis ringing through the fancy while we gaze!
I have before observed that angels are supposed to be masculine, with the feminine attributes of beauty and purity; but in the seventeenth century the Florentine painter, Giovanni di S. Giovanni, scandalised his contemporaries by introducing into a glory round the Virgin, female angels (angelesse). Rubens has more than once committed the same fault against ecclesiastical canons and decorum; for instance, in his Madonna ‘aux Anges’ in the Louvre. Such aberrations of fancy are mere caprices of the painter, improprieties inadmissible in high art.
Of the sprawling, fluttering, half-naked angels of the Pietro da Cortona and Bernini school, and the feeble mannerists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, what shall be said? that they are worthy to illustrate Moore’s Loves of the Angels? ‘non ragioniam di lor;’ no, nor even look at them! I have seen angels of the later Italian and Spanish painters more like opera dancers, with artificial wings and gauze draperies, dressed to figure in a ballet, than anything else I could compare them to.
The most original, and, in truth, the only new and original version of the Scripture idea of angels which I have met with, is that of William Blake, a poet painter, somewhat mad as we are told, if indeed his madness were not rather ‘the telescope of truth,’ a sort of poetical clairvoyance, bringing the unearthly nearer to him than to others. His adoring angels float rather than fly, and, with their half-liquid draperies, seem about to dissolve into light and love: and his rejoicing angels—behold them—sending up their voices with the morning stars, that ‘singing, in their glory move!’
29 ‘All the sons of God shouted for joy!’
As regards the treatment of angels in the more recent productions of art, the painters and sculptors have generally adhered to received and known types in form and in sentiment. The angels of the old Italians, Giotto and Frate Angelico, have been very well imitated by Steinle and others of the German school: the Raffaelesque feeling has been in general aimed at by the French and English painters. Tenerani had the old mosaics in his mind when he conceived that magnificent colossal Angel of the Resurrection seated on a tomb, and waiting for the signal to sound his trumpet, which I saw in his atelier, prepared I believe for the monument of the Duchess Lanti.[56]
I pause here, for I have dwelt upon these celestial Hierarchies, winged Splendours, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, till my fancy is becoming somewhat mazed and dazzled by the contemplation. I must leave the reader to go into a picture-gallery, or look over a portfolio of engravings, and so pursue the theme, whithersoever it may lead him, and it may lead him, in Hamlet’s words, ‘to thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul!’[57]
