St. Gabriel.
Lat. Sanctus Gabriel. Ital. San Gabriello, San Gabriele, L’Angelo Annunziatore. Fr. St. Gabriel.
‘I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God.’—Luke i. 19.
In those passages of Scripture where the Angel Gabriel is mentioned by name, he is brought before us in the character of a Messenger only, and always on important occasions. In the Old Testament he is sent to Daniel to announce the return of the Jews from captivity, and to explain the vision which prefigures the destinies of mighty empires. His contest with the Angel of the kingdom of Persia, when St. Michael comes to his assistance, would be a splendid subject in fit hands; I do not know that it has ever been painted. In the New Testament the mission of Gabriel is yet more sublime: he first appears to the high priest Zacharias, and foretells the birth of John the Baptist,—a subject which belongs especially to the life of that saint. Six months later, Gabriel is sent to announce the appearance of the Redeemer of mankind.[89]
In the Jewish tradition, Gabriel is the guardian of the celestial treasury. Hence, I presume, Milton has made him chief guardian of Paradise:—
Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,
Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night.
As the Angel who announced the birth of Christ, he has been venerated as the Angel who presides over childbirth. He foretells the birth of Samson, and, in the apocryphal legends, he foretells to Joachim the birth of the Virgin. In the East, he is of great importance. Mahomet selected him as his immediate teacher and inspirer, and he became the great protecting angel of Islamism: hence between Michael, the protector of the Jews and Christians, and Gabriel, the protector of the Moslem, there is supposed to exist no friendly feeling—rather the reverse.
In the New Testament, Gabriel is a much more important personage than Michael; yet I have never met with any picture in which he figures singly as an object of worship. In devotional pictures he figures as the second of the three Archangels—‘Secondo fra i primi,’ as Tasso styles him; or in his peculiar character as the divine messenger of grace, ‘l’Angelo annunziatore.’ He then usually bears in one hand a lily or a sceptre; in the other a scroll on which is inscribed, ‘Ave Maria, Gratia plena!’[90]
The subject called the Annunciation is one of the most frequent and most important, as it is one of the most beautiful, in the whole range of Christian Art. It belongs, however, to the history of the Virgin, where I shall have occasion to treat it at length; yet as the Angel Gabriel here assumes, by direct scriptural testimony, a distinct name and personality, and as the dignity and significance proper to a subject so often unworthily and perversely treated depend very much on the character and deportment given to the celestial messenger, I shall make a few observations in this place with respect to the treatment of the angel, only reserving the theme in its general bearing for future consideration.
In the early representations of the Annunciation it is treated as a religious mystery, and with a solemn simplicity and purity of feeling, which is very striking and graceful in itself, as well as in harmony with the peculiar manner of the divine revelation. The scene is generally a porch or portico of a temple-like building; the Virgin stands (she is very seldom seated, and then on a kind of raised throne); the angel stands before her, at some distance: very often, she is within the portico; he is without. Gabriel is a majestic being, generally robed in white, wearing the tunic and pallium à l’antique, his flowing hair bound by a jewelled tiara, with large many-coloured wings, and bearing the sceptre of sovereignty in the left hand, while the right is extended in the act of benediction as well as salutation: ‘Hail! thou that art highly favoured! Blessed art thou among women!’ He is the principal figure: the attitude of the Virgin, with her drapery drawn over her head, her eyes drooping, and her hands folded on her bosom, is always expressive of the utmost submission and humility. So Dante introduces the image of the lowly Virgin receiving the angel as an illustration of the virtue of Humility:—
Ed avea in atto impressa esta favella
‘Ecce ancilla Dei!’—
and Flaxman has admirably embodied this idea, both in the lofty angel with outspread arms, and the kneeling Virgin. Sometimes the angel floats in, with his arms crossed over his bosom, but still with the air of a superior being, as in this beautiful figure after Lorenzo Monaco, from a picture in the Florence Gallery.
The two figures are not always in the same picture; it was a very general custom to place the Virgin and the Angel, the ‘Annunziata’ and the ‘Angelo annunziatore,’ one on each side of the altar, the place of the Virgin being usually to the right of the spectator; sometimes the figures are half-length: sometimes, when placed in the same picture, they are in two separate compartments, a pillar, or some other ornament, running up the picture between them; as in many old altar-pieces, where the two figures are placed above or on each side of the Nativity, or the Baptism, or the Marriage at Cana, or some other scene from the life and miracles of our Saviour. This subject does not appear on the sarcophagi; the earliest instance I have met with is in the mosaic series over the arch in front of the choir in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome, executed in the fifth century. Here we have two successive moments represented together. In the first the angel is sent on his mission, and appears flying down from heaven; the earliest instance I have seen of an angel in the act of flight. In the second group the Virgin appears seated on a throne; two angels stand behind her, supposed to represent her guardian angels, and the angel Gabriel stands in front with one hand extended. The dresses are classical, and there is not a trace of the mediæval feeling, or style, in the whole composition.
In the Greek pictures, the Angel and the Virgin both stand; and in the Annunciation of Cimabue the Greek formula is strictly adhered to. I have seen pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which Gabriel enters as a princely ambassador, with three little angels bearing up his mantle behind: in a picture in the collection of Prince Wallerstein, one meek and beautiful angel bears up the rich robes of the majestic archangel, like a page in the train of a sovereign prince. But from the beginning of the fourteenth century we perceive a change of feeling, as well as a change of style: the veneration paid to the Virgin demanded another treatment. She becomes not merely the principal person, but the superior being; she is the ‘Regina angelorum,’ and the angel bows to her, or kneels before her as to a queen.[91] Thus in the famous altar-piece at Cologne, the angel kneels; he bears a sceptre, and also a sealed roll, as if he were a celestial ambassador delivering his credentials: about the same period we sometimes see the angel merely with his hands folded over his breast, and his head inclined, delivering his message as if to a superior being.
43 The Angel Gabriel (Wilhelm of Cologne. 1440)
I cannot decide at what period the lily first replaced the sceptre in the hand of the angel, not merely as the emblem of purity, but as the symbol of the Virgin from the verse in the Canticles usually applied to her: ‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley.’ A lily is often placed in a vase near the Virgin, or in the foreground of the picture: of all the attributes placed in the hand of the angel, the lily is the most usual and the most expressive.
The painters of Siena, who often displayed a new and original sentiment in the treatment of a subject, have represented the angel Gabriel as the announcer of ‘peace on earth;’ he kneels before the Virgin, crowned with olive, and bearing a branch of olive in his hand, as in a picture by Taddeo Bartoli. There is also a beautiful St. Gabriel by Martin Schoen, standing, and crowned with olive. So Dante—
L’ angel che venne in terra col decreto
Della molt’ anni lagrimata pace.
Another passage in Dante which the painters seem to have had before them shows us the Madonna as queen, and the angel as adoring:—
‘Qual è quel angel che con tanto giuoco
Guarda negli occhi la nostra regina
Innamorato sì che par di fuoco?’
Ed egli a me,—‘Baldezza e leggiadria
Quanta esser puote in angelo ed in alma
Tutta è in lui, e si volem che sia!’
It is in seeking this baldezza e leggiadria in a mistaken sense that the later painters have forgotten all the spiritual dignity of the Angel Messenger.
Where the angel bears a lighted taper, which the Virgin extends her hand to take from him; or, kneeling, bears in his hand a palm-branch, surmounted by seven or twelve stars (44), the subject represented is not the announcement of the birth of the Saviour, but the death of the Virgin, a part of her legendary history which is rarely treated and easily mistaken; then the announcing angel is not Gabriel, but Michael.[92]
44 Angel announcing the death of the Virgin (F. Filippo Lippi)
In old German Art, the angel in the Annunciation is habited in priestly garments richly embroidered (42). The scene is often the bedroom of the Virgin; and while the announcing angel enters and kneels at the threshold of the door, the Holy Ghost enters at the window. I have seen examples in which Gabriel, entering at a door behind the Virgin, unfolds his official ‘Ave Maria.’ He has no lily, or sceptre, and she is apparently conscious of his presence without seeing him.[93]
But in the representations of the sixteenth century we find neither the solemnity of the early Italian nor the naïveté of the early German school; and this divine subject becomes more and more materialised and familiarised, until, losing its spiritual character, it strikes us as shockingly prosaic. One cannot say that the angel is invariably deficient in dignity, or the Virgin in grace. In the Venetian school and the Bologna school we find occasionally very beautiful Annunciations; but in general the half-draped fluttering angels and the girlish-looking Virgins are nothing less than offensive; and in the attempt to vary the sentiment, the naturalisti have here run the risk of being much too natural.
45 The Archangel Gabriel (Van Eyck)
In the Cathedral at Orvieto, the Annunciation is represented in front of the choir by two colossal statues by Francesco Mochi: to the right is the angel Gabriel, poised on a marble cloud, in an attitude so fantastic that he looks as if he were going to dance; on the other side stands the Virgin, conceived in a spirit how different!—yet not less mistaken; she has started from her throne; with one hand she grasps it, with the other she seems to guard her person against the intruder: majesty at once, and fear, a look of insulted dignity, are in the air and attitude,—‘par che minacci e tema nel tempo istesso’—but I thought of Mrs. Siddons while I looked, not of the Virgin Mary.
This fault of sentiment I saw reversed, but equally in the extreme, in another example—a beautiful miniature.[94] The Virgin, seated on the side of her bed, sinks back alarmed, almost fainting; the angel in a robe of crimson, with a white tunic, stands before her, half turning away and grasping his sceptre in his hand, with a proud commanding air, like a magnificent surly god—a Jupiter who had received a repulse.
I pass over other instances conceived in a taste even more blamable—Gabriels like smirking, winged lord chamberlains; and Virgins, half prim, half voluptuous—the sanctity and high solemnity of the event utterly lost. Let this suffice for the present: I may now leave the reader to his own feeling and discrimination.