The Madonna of the Church of the Redentore[18] shows another pair of angel musicians, sitting on a low wall in the foreground, one at the head and the other at the feet of the sleeping Babe. Both are playing on lutes, and the serious, absorbed air with which they fulfil their task is delightful to see. With lifted face and faraway eyes, they seem to be listening to a heavenly chorus, of which their own melody is an echo.

Any mention of the Venetian type of angels would be incomplete without adding the names of Palma Vecchio and Carpaccio to the list of those who most delicately interpreted the subject. Examples of their work are scattered over Northern Italy, but none perhaps are more representative than Carpaccio’s Presentation, in the Academy at Venice, and Palma’s altar-piece at Zerman.

[angel from painting in church of redentore.
—vivarini.]

The child-angel as a playmate and companion of the Christ-child is a conception which has not infrequently been represented in art with great appropriateness. Both Van Dyck and Lucas Cranach have given us the Repose in Egypt, enlivened by the presence of a company of frolicsome cherubs sporting about the Divine Babe. Rubens painted a lovely group of the Infant Jesus and Saint John, seated on the ground, playing with their celestial little visitors. A Holy Family, by Ippolito Andreasi, represents angel children gathering and bringing grapes to the Saviour.

With a small circle of Florentine artists, led by Botticelli, and including Filippo Lippi and Filippino Lippi, a unique class of child-angels is in great favor. These are children of a larger growth and maturer appearance than the infantine cherubs of contemporary artists, and might properly be called angel-youths. In the best examples their expression is an admirable mingling of strength and purity. As attendants to the Christ-child, they serve in various capacities with loving and reverent grace.

In Botticelli’s famous “round Madonna” of the Uffizi, one holds the ink vessel into which the Virgin dips her pen as she writes the Magnificat, two others hold a starry crown over her head, and two more complete the group, as companions of the Saviour. In the Holy Family, by the same artist, only two angels are introduced, one of whom leans over a balustrade, with a beautiful lily-stalk in his hand, in token of the Virgin’s purity.

Filippo Lippi’s charming rendering of angel-youths is best seen in the picture which represents the Christ-child borne by two attendant cherubs in exemplification of the psalmist’s words, “They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” The Madonna stands before the Divine Babe, with hands clasped in adoration, a lovely impersonation of the Madre Pia.