The Sistine Madonna suggests itself at once as a most beautiful illustration. The entire canvas is studded with tiny child faces, delicately outlined,—a veritable cloud of witnesses, dissolving into the golden glory with which they are surrounded. What a contrast is the exquisite spirituality of this conception to Perugino’s angel glories, where baby faces, each with six many-hued wings are ranged at regular intervals throughout the composition!

A less notable example of Raphael’s unique treatment of the angel host is in his Vision of Ezekiel, a small painting of earlier date than the Sistine Madonna. Here the idea is manifestly drawn from the prophet’s description of his vision of the four living creatures in a great amber wheel, which was “full of eyes.”

Turning from Raphael’s clouds of dimly suggested cherub faces to those representations of the angel throngs in which the child forms are more distinctly delineated, we find that the great masters have made use of the myriad figures to express a corresponding variety in mood and character. Thus, when the emotions of the principal personage in a composition are too complex to be adequately expressed on a single countenance, the angel faces surrounding may each, in turn, convey some one of the many aspects of thought or feeling which go to make up the entire conception.

The Crucifixion[16] is a striking instance of the mingling, of contrasted emotions,—bodily suffering and spiritual victory, worldly defeat and heavenly triumph,—all of which cannot be depicted on the face of the Christ, but which a throng of attendant cherubs may fully interpret. The same principle is illustrated in the many scenes of which the Madonna is the central figure, as the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and the Coronation.

[fragment from the assumption.—titian.]

Of such paintings, Titian’s Assumption is the most splendid example. The ascending, Virgin is surrounded by a wreath of child-angels, of surpassing grace and beauty. It is of these that Mrs. Jameson has written, in her incomparable way, that they are “mind and music and love, kneaded, as it were, into form and color.” From a compositional point of view they serve an important purpose in directing the attention of the spectator to the principal figure of the picture. All the gracefully intertwined limbs of the angelic host—outstretched arms and floating figures,—form the radii of a great semicircle centering in the beautiful Madonna.

If Titian’s child-angels stand for the highest attainment in the idealization of child beauty, those of Rubens, on the other hand, are the most human and lovable ever conceived in art. Their lovely baby forms cluster in countless numbers about the glorified Virgin, joyously bearing palm and wreath in token of her triumph.

The name of Murillo also occupies the first rank in the delineation of companies of child-angels. Called in turn the Titian and the Rubens of Spain, he is like his Venetian and Flemish prototypes in his intense sympathy for childhood. His angels have not that transcendent superiority to mortals which distinguishes Titian’s, nor are they the dimpled bits of pink-and-white babyhood characteristic of Rubens. They belong somewhere between the two extremes, and are remarkable for their innocence and purity of expression. As the Immaculate Conception was Murillo’s favorite subject, it is here that we see his child-angels at their best. He has also introduced them into the Holy Family of Seville, as well as into that most wonderful painting of the Christ-child Appearing to Saint Anthony of Padua.