Gradually fewer angels were represented at the Crucifixion, and an apparently unwritten law limited them to two or three with chalices; indeed, for a time this scene was far less frequently pictured.
Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, Lombard painters of the fifteenth century, again portrayed so many angels, and such numberless little winged heads, that the upper portions of their Crucifixions were alive with them. These artists, with their refined tenderness of manner, created angels that have rarely, if ever, been excelled in what may be termed a genuine angelic quality. Especially is this true of Gaudenzio; the lamenting angels above his Crucifixion, in the church at Varallo, are among the most satisfactory representations of angels that occur in any picture of this scene.
If the Resurrection of Christ is to be represented, the angel is appropriately present; but as no account of the scene is given in the Bible, and no one witnessed it, each artist who portrayed it was at liberty to give his imagination full play in his work. For a long time there were no pictures of this subject, its treatment being confined to carvings in ivory, on shrines and other small objects. The greater number of artists apparently esteemed it as too sacred, as well as too tremendous, a subject to be adequately conceived and satisfactorily presented.
So far as I can learn, the Resurrection was first painted by Giotto, as one of a series of small pictures upon a press for the sacred vessels in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence; it is now in the Academy of that city. In this picture there is no angel. Fra Angelico represents the Maries talking with the angel, while Christ is suspended in air above them. By degrees the designs for this subject were modified, until, in the picture in the Vatican which has been attributed to Perugino, the rising Christ, bearing the banner of victory, is worshipped by two angels. This work is now believed to be by Raphael, as his authenticated studies for it are in the Oxford Collection.
Perhaps it is to be regretted that the illustration of this supremely mystical subject was ever attempted in Art. I cannot imagine that any existing picture of it should be seriously approved as a whole, although certain figures or details may be sincerely admired.
The Ascension of Christ is another mystical subject, which was long unattempted in a realistic portrayal of the scene as described in the New Testament. Ancient ivories show Jesus as grasping the hand of God extended to him through the clouds, and being thus drawn up from earth. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Scripture expression, “he was taken up,” was given a literal meaning, and the figure of Jesus was represented in the mandorla,—the oblong glory in which Christ, the Virgin, or saints are represented when ascending to heaven,—which was borne by angels to a certain height, when a cloud received him out of sight.
As with the Resurrection so with the Ascension, Giotto was bold enough to attempt representing the scene in accordance with the scriptural description, and painted his idea of it on the walls of the Arena Chapel, in Padua. In the centre of the lower part of the picture are two angels, who, with raised hands, direct the attention of the kneeling Virgin, and groups of Apostles, also kneeling, to Christ, already soaring far above them, accompanied by numerous worshipping angels, who are on both sides, at some distance apart from him.
This fresco is much injured, but is highly valued for the sublimity of its composition. No angel aids Christ to rise. He is apparently able to fulfil his own words, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
Many pictures of the Ascension are seen in galleries, and it became a favorite subject for the decoration of church vaults and cupolas, especially in Greek churches. Correggio’s Ascension, in the Church of San Giovanni, in Parma, is famous wherever Christian art is studied. This master depicted numberless little angels flying here and there, riding on clouds or mischievously peeping from behind them, chasing each other as in some boisterous game, and by their levity and frolicsomeness destroying all seriousness of effect, in spite of the solemnity of the Evangelists and Reverend Fathers in the angles of the vault below.
This picture must not, however, be taken as irreverent. Evidently Correggio wished to convey the idea that the Ascension of Christ was an occasion of joy to the angels, to whom his earthly pilgrimage and sufferings had given a certain seriousness,—not sorrow, because angels are happy, and not subject to human wants and weakness.