14 Angel (Francia) 15 Piping Angel (Gian Bellini)
Most beautiful examples of this treatment occur both in early painting and sculpture; and no one who has wandered through churches and galleries, with feeling and observation awake, can fail to remember such. It struck me as characteristic of the Venetian school, that the love of music seemed to combine with the sense of harmony in colour; nowhere have I seen musical angels so frequently and so beautifully introduced: and whereas the angelic choirs of Fiesole, Ghirlandajo, and Raphael, seem to be playing as an act of homage for the delight of the Divine Personages, those of Vivarini and Bellini and Palma appear as if enchanted by their own music; and both together are united in the grand and beautiful angels of Melozzo da Forli, particularly in one who is bending over a lute, and another who with a triumphant and ecstatic expression strikes the cymbals.[29] Compare the cherubic host who are pouring forth their hymns of triumph, blowing their uplifted trumpets, and touching immortal harps and viols in Angelico’s ‘Coronation,’[30] or in Signorelli’s ‘Paradiso,’[31] with those lovely Venetian choristers, the piping boys, myrtle-crowned, who are hymning Bellini’s Madonna,[32] or those who are touching the lute to the praise and glory of St. Ambrose in Vivarini’s most beautiful picture; you will feel immediately the distinction in point of sentiment.
The procession of chanting angels which once surmounted the organ in the Duomo of Florence is a perfect example of musical angels applied to the purpose of decoration. Perhaps it was well to remove this exquisite work of art to a place of safety, where it can be admired and studied as a work of art; but the removal has taken from it the appropriate expression. How they sing!—when the tones of the organ burst forth, we might have fancied we heard their divine voices through the stream of sound! The exquisite little bronze choristers round the high altar of St. Antonio in Padua are another example; Florentine in elegance of form, Venetian in sentiment, intent upon their own sweet song!
There is a third function ascribed to these angelic natures, which brings them even nearer to our sympathies; they are the deputed guardians of the just and innocent. St. Raphael, whose story I shall presently relate, is the prince of the guardian angels. The Jews held that the angels deputed to Lot were his guardian angels.[33] The fathers of the Christian Church taught that every human being, from the hour of his birth to that of his death, is accompanied by an angel appointed to watch over him. The Mahometans give to each of us a good and an evil angel; but the early Christians supposed us to be attended each by a good angel only, who undertakes that office, not merely from duty to God, and out of obedience and great humility, but as inspired by exceeding charity and love towards his human charge. It would require the tongues of angels themselves to recite all that we owe to these benign and vigilant guardians. They watch by the cradle of the new-born babe, and spread their celestial wings round the tottering steps of infancy. If the path of life be difficult and thorny, and evil spirits work its shame and woe, they sustain us; they bear the voice of our complaining, of our supplication, of our repentance, up to the foot of God’s throne, and bring us back in return a pitying benediction, to strengthen and to cheer. When passion and temptation strive for the mastery, they encourage us to resist; when we conquer, they crown us; when we falter and fail, they compassionate and grieve over us; when we are obstinate in polluting our own souls, and perverted not only in act but in will, they leave us—and woe to them that are so left! But the good angel does not quit his charge until his protection is despised, rejected, and utterly repudiated. Wonderful the fervour of their love—wonderful their meekness and patience— who endure from day to day the spectacle of the unveiled human heart with all its miserable weaknesses and vanities, its inordinate desires and selfish purposes! Constant to us in death, they contend against the powers of darkness for the emancipated spirit: they even visit the suffering sinner in purgatory; they keep alive in the tormented spirit faith and hope, and remind him that the term of expiation will end at last. So Dante[34] represents the souls in purgatory as comforted in their misery; and (which has always seemed to me a touch of sublime truth and tenderness) as rejoicing over those who were on earth conspicuous for the very virtues wherein themselves were deficient. When at length the repentant soul is sufficiently purified, the guardian angel bears it to the bosom of the Saviour.
The earlier painters and sculptors did not, apparently, make the same use of guardian angels that we so often meet with in works of Modern Art. Poetical allegories of angels guiding the steps of childhood, extending a shield over innocence, watching by a sick bed, do not, I think, occur before the seventeenth century; at least I have not met with such. The ancient masters, who really believed in the personal agency of our angelic guardians, beheld them with awe and reverence, and reserved their presence for great and solemn occasions. The angel who presents the pious votary to Christ or the Virgin, who crowns St. Cecilia and St. Valerian after their conquest over human weakness; the angel who cleaves the air with flight precipitant’ to break the implements of torture, or to extend the palm to the dying martyr, victorious over pain; the angels who assist and carry in their arms the souls of the just; are, in these and all similar examples, representations of guardian angels.
Such, then, are the three great functions of the angelic host: they are Messengers, Choristers, and Guardians. But angels, without reference to their individuality or their ministry—with regard only to their species and their form, as the most beautiful and the most elevated of created essences, as intermediate between heaven and earth—are introduced into all works of art which have a sacred purpose or character, and must be considered not merely as decorative accessories, but as a kind of presence, as attendant witnesses; and, like the chorus in the Greek tragedies, looking on where they are not actors. In architectural decoration, the cherubim with which Solomon adorned his temple have been the authority and example.[35] ‘Within the oracle he made two cherubims, each ten cubits high, and with wings five cubits in length’ (the angels in the old Christian churches on each side of the altar correspond with these cherubim), ‘and he overlaid the cherubims with gold, and carved all the walls of the house with carved figures of cherubims, and he made doors of olive tree, and he carved on them figures of cherubims.’ So, in Christian art and architecture, angels, with their beautiful cinctured heads and outstretched wings and flowing draperies, fill up every space. The instances are so numerous that they will occur to every one who has given a thought to the subject. I may mention the frieze of angels in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, merely as an example at hand, and which can be referred to at any moment; also the angels round the choir of Lincoln Cathedral, of which there are fine casts in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham; and in some of the old churches in Saxony which clearly exhibit the influence of Byzantine Art—for instance, at Freyberg, Merseburg, Naumburg—angels with outspread wings fill up the spandrils of the arches along the nave.
But, in the best ages of Art, angels were not merely employed as decorative accessories; they had their appropriate place and a solemn significance as a part of that theological system which the edifice, as a whole, represented.
As a celestial host, surrounding the throne of the Trinity; or of Christ, as redeemer or as a judge; or of the Virgin in glory; or the throned Madonna and Child; their place is immediately next to the Divine Personages, and before the Evangelists.