The division of those to be judged rests, on Daniel xii., 2: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt;” and even more positively on Christ’s words in Matthew xxv., already referred to.
In the utter absence of scriptural warrant for the picturing of the devil and his satellites, who seize, torture, and hurl into hell those doomed to shame and endless contempt, what defence of it can be made? Certainly none from an artistic standpoint; and this consideration should have prevented such representations. Artists should be commiserated who could not sufficiently express the woe of the condemned by the wretchedness of their faces and manner, as, hearing the fatal “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,” they go to the left, not daring
Fra Angelico.—An Angel conducting a Soul to Heaven.
to raise their eyes to Christ, nor even to look at the blessed of his kingdom.
It would be a pleasure to consider separately the different methods of representing the Judge of all the world and those surrounding him, as seen in the works of the masters, but we are here concerned with the angels alone, of which, in nearly all these pictures, there are three classes.
The angels who hold the cross, scourge, nails, crown of thorns, and other symbols of the Passion of Christ, emphasize the theological teaching that men are judged according to their acceptance or rejection of the Atonement by Christ for the sins of the world. In early pictures of the Judgment these angels stand on clouds, below the Judge, but later they were depicted as hovering above the Judgment Seat. In whatever position they are placed, they appear to attribute a vast importance to the prominence of the symbols of the Passion. Fra Angelico happily places a single angel at the feet of Christ with the cross alone, as a complete symbol of the suffering and death of Jesus.