What was known as a Liturgy of Angels was most effective and beautiful. It consisted of a procession of angels on each side of the choir, apparently approaching the altar, all wearing the stole and alba of a deacon, and bearing the implements of the mass. The statues of kneeling angels, not infrequently placed on each side the altar, holding tapers, or the emblems of the Passion of Christ, were not mere decorations, but symbolized the angelic presence wherever Christ is worshipped. In short, either processions or single figures of angels, in any part of a church, and apparently approaching the altar, are symbols of the glorious hosts of heaven who evermore praise God.
During the first three centuries of Christianity the representation of angels was not permissible, and it is interesting to observe the crude and curious manner in which they were pictured in the illuminated manuscripts and the mosaics of the fifth century. Indeed, until the tenth century the angels in Art were curiously formed, and more curiously draped.
Giotto first approached the ideal representation of angels, and, naturally, his pupils excelled him in their conception of what these celestial beings should be. It was, however, Angelico who first—and shall we not say last?—succeeded in portraying absolutely unearthly angels,—angels who must have appeared to him in his holy dreams, and impressed themselves on his pure spirit in such a wise that with mere paints and brushes he could picture a superhuman purity.
Not an angel of Angelico’s resembles any man, while in the angels of other masters, beautiful, seraphic, and charming as they may be, we often fancy that we see a beautiful boy, or a happy child, who might have served the artist as an angel-making model.
Wonderfully celestial as Angelico’s angels seem to be, they are feminine, almost without exception. In his time this criticism was held to be a serious one; but since angels are sexless,—according to the religious teaching on which this
Fra Angelico.—An Angel of the Tabernacle.