occur much more frequently.
The ancient heresy that God made use of the agency of angels in the creation of the world, and of mankind, I must notice here, because it has found its way into Art; for example, in an old miniature which represents an angel having before him a lump of clay, a kind of ébauche of humanity, which he appears to be moulding with his hands, while the Almighty stands by directing the work.[39] This idea, absurd as it may appear, is not perhaps more absurd than the notion of those who would represent the Great First Cause as always busied in fashioning or altering the forms in his visible creation, like a potter or any other mechanic. But as we are occupied at present with the scriptural, not the legendary subjects, I return to the Old Testament. The first time that we read of an angel sent as a messenger of mercy, it is for the comfort of poor Hagar; when he found her weeping by the spring of water in the wilderness, because her mistress had afflicted her: and again, when she was cast forth and her boy fainted for thirst. In the representation of these subjects, I do not know a single instance in which the usual angelic form has not been adhered to. In the sacrifice of Isaac, ‘the angel of the Lord calls to Abraham out of heaven.’ This subject, as the received type of the sacrifice of the Son of God, was one of the earliest in Christian Art. We find it on the sarcophagi of the third and fourth centuries; but in one of the latest only have I seen a personage introduced as staying the hand of Abraham, and this personage is without wings. In painting, the angel is sometimes in the act of taking the sword out of Abraham’s hand, which expresses the nature of his message: or he lays one hand on his arm, and with the other points to the ram which was to replace the sacrifice, or brings the ram in his arms to the altar; but, whatever the action, the form of the angelic messenger has never varied from the sixth century.
19 The Angels who visit Abraham (Raphael)
In the visit of the angels to Abraham, there has been a variety caused by the wording of the text. It is not said that three angels visited Abraham, yet in most of the ancient representations the three celestial guests are, winged angels. I need hardly observe that these three angels are assumed to be a figure of the Trinity, and in some old illuminations the interpretation is not left doubtful, the angels being characterised as the three persons of the Trinity, wearing each the cruciform nimbus: two of them, young and beardless, stand behind; the third, representing the Father, has a beard, and, before Him, Abraham is prostrated. Beautiful for grace and simplicity is the winged group by Ghiberti, in which the three seem to step and move together as one. More modern artists have given us the celestial visitants merely as men. Pre-eminent in this style of conception are the pictures of Raphael and Murillo. Raphael here, as elsewhere, a true poet, has succeeded in conveying, with exquisite felicity, the sentiment of power, of a heavenly presence, and of a mysterious significance. The three youths, who stand linked together hand in hand before the Patriarch, with such an air of benign and superior grace, want no wings to show us that they belong to the courts of heaven, and have but just descended to earth—
So lively shines
In them divine resemblance, and such grace
The hand that form’d them on their shape hath pour’d.
Murillo, on the contrary, gives us merely three young men, travellers, and has set aside wholly both the angelic and the mystic character of the visitants.[40]
The angels who descend and ascend the ladder in Jacob’s dream are in almost every instance represented in the usual form; sometimes a few[41]—sometimes in multitudes[42]—sometimes as one only, who turns to bless the sleeper before he ascends;[43] and the ladder is sometimes a flight, or a series of flights, of steps ascending from earth to the empyrean. But here it is Rembrandt who has shown himself the poet; the ladder is a slanting stream of light; the angels are mysterious bird-like luminous forms, which emerge one after another from a dazzling fount of glory, and go floating up and down,—so like a dream made visible!—In Middle-Age Art this vision of Jacob occurs very rarely. I shall have to return to it when treating of the subjects from the Old Testament.