In relating ‘the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise,’ it is not said that an angel was the immediate agent of the divine wrath, but it is so represented in works of Art. In the most ancient treatment I have met with,[36] a majestic armed angel drives forth the delinquents, and a cherub with six wings stands as guard before the gate. I found the same motif in the sculptures on the façade of the Duomo at Orvieto, by Niccolò Pisano. In another instance, an ancient Saxon miniature, the angel is represented not as driving them forth, but closing the door against them. But these are exceptions to the usual mode of treatment, which seldom varies; the angel is not represented in wrath, but calm, and stretches forth a sword which is often (literally rendering the text) a waving lambent flame. I remember an instance in which the preternatural sword, ‘turning every way,’ as the form of a wheel of flames.
An angel is expressly introduced as a minister of wrath in the story of Balaam, in which I have seen no deviation from the obvious prosaic treatment, rendering the text literally, ‘and the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand.’
‘The destroying angel, leaning from heaven, presents to David three arrows, from which to choose—war, pestilence, or famine.’ I have found this subject beautifully executed in several MSS., for instance, in the ‘Heures d’Anne de Bretagne;’ also in pictures and in prints.
‘The destroying angel sent to chastise the arrogance of David, is beheld standing between heaven and earth with his sword stretched over Jerusalem to destroy it.’ Of this sublime vision I have never seen any but the meanest representations; none of the great masters have treated it; perhaps Rembrandt might have given us the terrible and glorious angel standing like a shadow in the midst of his own intense irradiation. David fallen on his face, and the sons of Ornan hiding themselves by their rude threshing-floor, with that wild mixture of the familiar and the unearthly in which he alone has succeeded.
‘The Chastisement of Heliodorus’ has given occasion to the sublimest composition in which human genius ever attempted to embody the conception of the supernatural—Raphael’s fresco in the Vatican. St. Michael, the protecting angel of the Hebrew nation, is supposed to have been the minister of divine wrath on this occasion; but Raphael, in omitting the wings, and all exaggeration or alteration of the human figure, has shown how unnecessary it was for him to have recourse to the prodigious and impossible in form, in order to give the supernatural in sentiment. The unearthly warrior and his unearthly steed—the weapon in his hand, which is not a sword to pierce, nor a club to strike, but a sort of mace, of which, as it seems, a touch would annihilate; the two attendant spirits, who come gliding above the marble floor, with their hair streaming back with the rapidity of their aërial motion—are in the very spirit of Dante, and, as conceptions of superhuman power, superior to anything in pictured form which Art has bequeathed to us.
In calling to mind the various representations of the angels of the Apocalypse let loose for destruction, one is tempted to exclaim, ‘O for a warning voice!’ When the Muse of Milton quailed, and fell ten thousand fathom deep into Bathos, what could be expected from human invention? In general, where this subject is attempted in pictures, we find the angels animated, like those of Milton in the war of heaven, with ‘fierce desire of battle,’ breathing vengeance, wrath, and fury. So Albert Dürer, in those wonderful scenes of his ‘Apocalypse,’ has exhibited them; but some of the early Italians show them merely impassive, conquering almost without effort, punishing without anger. The immediate instruments of the wrath of God in the day of judgment are not angels, but devils or demons, generally represented by the old painters with every possible exaggeration of hideousness, and as taking a horrible and grotesque delight in their task. The demons are fallen angels, their deformity a consequence of their fall. Thus, in some very ancient representations of the expulsion of Lucifer and his rebel host, the degradation of the form increases with their distance from heaven.[37] Those who are uppermost are still angels; they bear the aureole, the wings, and the tunic; they have not yet lost all their original brightness: those below them begin to assume the bestial form: the fingers become talons, the heads become horned; and at last, as they touch the confines of the gulf of hell, the transformation is seen complete, from the luminous angel into the abominable and monstrous devil, with serpent tail, claws, bristles, and tusks. This gradual transformation, as they descend into the gulf of sin, has a striking allegorical significance which cannot escape the reader. In a Greek MS. of the ninth century,[38] bearing singular traces of antique classical art in the conception and attributes of the figures, I found both angels and demons treated in a style quite peculiar and poetical. The angels are here gigantic, majestic, Jove-like figures, with great wings. The demons are also majestic graceful winged figures, but painted of a dusky grey colour (it may originally have been black). In one scene, where Julian the Apostate goes to seek the heathen divinities, they are thus represented, that is, as black angels; showing that the painter had here assumed the devils or demons to be the discrowned and fallen gods of the antique world.
These are a few of the most striking instances of angels employed as ministers of wrath. Angels, as ministers of divine grace and mercy,
Of all those arts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.