spiritually-minded monk relied,—I fail to see ground for disapprobation of his work.
The angels of Giotto and Benozzo Gozzoli, with all their beauty, are also feminine, while the great Michael Angelo, whose angels have not yet attained to wings, failed to represent such celestial beings as one would choose as personal attendants.
Leonardo’s angels almost grin; Correggio reproduced the lovely children who did duty as his angels; almost the same may be said of Titian; while in the pictures by Francesco Albani, Guido Reni, and the Caracci, the angels are simply attractive and even elegant boys, as may be seen in our illustration of the child Jesus with angels, by Albani. It is so difficult to distinguish the angels of some artists from their cupids, that one can only decide between them by learning the titles of their pictures. These are characteristics of the works of these masters as a whole, with rare exceptions, rather than of single pictures.
To whom, then, may one look for satisfactory angels? For myself, I answer, to Raphael, and especially to his later works. His angels are sexless, spiritual, graceful, and, at the same time, the personification of intelligence and power, as may be seen in our illustration of the Archangel Michael. Witness also the three angels in the Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, in the Stanza della Signatura, in the Vatican. They are without wings, and none are needed to emphasize their godlike wrath against the thief who robbed the widow and orphan in the very temple of the Most High. The celestial warrior on his celestial steed,—believed to be St. Michael, in his office of Protector of the Hebrews,—the deadly mace drawn back ready to strike the fallen robber, and his two rapidly gliding attendants, with streaming hair and swift, spirit-like movement, are such conceptions and personifications of superhuman power as can scarcely be paralleled in any other work of Art.
Rembrandt, too, painted wonderful angels. No adjective ordinarily applied to such pictures is suited to these. They are poetical, unearthly apparitions, and once studied, can no more be forgotten than can some of Dante’s and Shakepeare’s immortal lines.
Modern artists have, speaking generally, wisely followed the examples of old masters in their treatment of angels. The poet Blake, however, is a notable exception to this rule. He painted angels that surely “sing to heaven,” while they float upon the air which their diaphanous drapery scarcely displaces, and seem about to vanish and become a portion of the ether which surrounds them.
I cannot better close this chapter than by quoting what Mr. Ruskin writes of the earlier and later representations of angels.
He says of the earlier pictures that there is “a certain confidence in the way in which angels trust to their wings, very characteristic of a period of bold and simple conception. Modern science has taught us that a wing cannot be anatomically joined to a shoulder; and, in proportion as painters approach more and more to the scientific, as distinguished from the contemplative state of mind, they put the wings of their angels on more timidly, and dwell with greater emphasis on the human form, with less upon the wings, until these last become a species of decorative appendage,—a mere sign of an angel.