I remember a little Triptyca, a genuine work of Fiesole, in which one of the lateral compartments represents his favourite subject, the souls of the blessed received into Paradise. They are moving from the lower part of the picture towards the top, along an ascent paved with flowers, all in white garments and crowned with roses. At one side, low down, stands a blue Cherub robed in drapery spangled with golden stars, who seems to encourage the blessed group. Above are the gates of heaven. Christ welcomes to his kingdom the beatified spirits, and on each side stands a Seraph, all of a glowing red, in spangled drapery. The figures are not here merely heads and wings, but full length, having all that soft peculiar grace which belongs to the painter.[21]
In a Coronation of the Virgin,[22] a glory of Seraphim over-arches the principal group. Here the angelic beings are wholly of a bright red colour: they are human to the waist, with hands clasped in devotion: the bodies and arms covered with plumage, but the forms terminating in wings; all uniformly red. In the same collection is a small Greek picture of Christ receiving the soul of the Virgin; over his head hovers a large, fiery-red, six-winged Seraph; and on each side a Seraph with hair and face and limbs of glowing red, and with white draperies. Vasari mentions an Adoration of the Magi by Liberale of Verona, in which a group of angels, all of a red colour, stand as a celestial guard round the Virgin and her divine Infant.[23]
7 Cherubim (Liberale di Verona)
The distinction of hue in the red and blue angels we find wholly omitted towards the end of the fifteenth century. Cherubim with blue, red, green, and variegated wings we find in the pictures of Perugino and other masters in the beginning of the sixteenth century, also in early pictures of Raphael. Liberale di Verona has given us, in a Madonna picture, Cherub heads without wings, and of a blue colour, emerging from golden clouds. And in Raphael’s Madonna di San Sisto the whole background is formed of Cherubim and Seraphim of a uniform delicate bluish tinge, as if composed of air, and melting away into an abyss of golden glory, the principal figures standing relieved against this flood of living love and light—beautiful! So are the Cherubim with many-coloured wings which float in the firmament in Perugino’s Coronation of the Virgin; but none of these can be regarded as so theologically correct as the fiery-red and bright-blue Seraphim and Cherubim, of which are formed the hierarchies and glories which figure in the early pictures, the stained glass, the painted sculpture, and the illuminated MSS. from the tenth to the sixteenth century.
The next five choirs of angels, the Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, though classed and described with great exactitude by the theologians, have not been very accurately discriminated in Art. In some examples the Thrones have green wings, a fiery aureole, and bear a throne in their hands. The Dominations, Virtues, and Powers sometimes bear a globe and a long sceptre surmounted by a cross. The Principalities, according to the Greek formula, should bear a branch of lily. The Archangels are figured as warriors, and carry a sword with the point upwards. The angels are robed as deacons, and carry a wand. In one of the ancient frescoes in the Cathedral at Orvieto, there is a complete hierarchy of angels, so arranged as to symbolise the Trinity, each of the nine choirs being composed of three angels, but the Seraphim only are distinguished by their red colour and priority of place. In the south porch of the Cathedral of Chartres, each of the nine orders is represented by two angels: in other instances, one angel only represents the order to which he belongs, and nine angels represent the whole hierarchy.[24] Where, however, we meet with groups or rows of angels, as in the Greek mosaics and the earliest frescoes all alike, all with the tiara, the long sceptre-like wands, and the orb of sovereignty, I believe these to represent the Powers and Princedoms of Heaven. The Archangels alone, as we shall see presently, have distinct individual names and attributes assigned to them.
8 Part of a Glory of Angels surrounding the figure of Christ in a picture by Ambrogio Borgognone
The angels, generally, have the human form; are winged; and are endowed with immutable happiness and perpetual youth, because they are ever in the presence of Him with whom there is no change and no time. They are direct emanations of the beauty of the Eternal mind, therefore beautiful; created, therefore not eternal, but created perfect, and immortal in their perfection: they are always supposed to be masculine; perhaps for the reason so beautifully assigned by Madame de Staël, ‘because the union of power with purity (la force avec la pureté) constitutes all that we mortals can imagine of perfection.’ There is no such thing as an old angel, and therefore there ought to be no such thing as an infant angel. The introduction of infant angels seems to have arisen from the custom of representing the regenerate souls of men as new-born infants, and perhaps also from the words of our Saviour, when speaking of children: ‘I say unto you, their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.’ Such representations, when religiously and poetically treated as spirits of love, intelligence, and innocence, are of exquisite beauty, and have a significance which charms and elevates the fancy; but from this, the true and religious conception, the Italian putti and puttini, and the rosy chubby babies of the Flemish school, are equally remote.
