And from the fount of life ambrosial drink.
It is not said that angels were visibly present at the baptism of Christ; but it appears to me that they ought not therefore to be supposed absent, and that there is a propriety in making them attendants on this solemn occasion. They are not introduced in the very earliest examples, those in the catacombs and sarcophagi; nor yet in the mosaics of Ravenna; because angels were then rarely figured, and instead of the winged angel we have the sedge-crowned river god, representing the Jordan. In the Greek formula, they are required to be present ‘in an attitude of respect:’ no mention is made of their holding the garments of our Saviour; but it is certain that in Byzantine Art, and generally from the twelfth century, this has been the usual mode of representing them. According to the Fathers, our Saviour had no guardian angel; because he did not require one: notwithstanding the sense usually given to the text, ‘He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone,’ the angels, they affirm, were not the guardians, but the servants, of Christ; and hence, I presume, the custom of representing them, not merely as present, but as ministering to him during his baptism. The gates of San Paolo (tenth century) afford the most ancient example I have met with of an angel holding the raiment of the Saviour: there is only one angel. Giotto introduces two graceful angels kneeling on the bank of the river, and looking on with attention. The angel in Raphael’s composition bows his head, as if awe-struck by the divine recognition of the majesty of the Redeemer; and the reverent manner in which he holds the vestment is very beautiful. Other examples will here suggest themselves to the reader, and I shall resume the subject when treating of the life of our Saviour.
In one account of our Saviour’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane, it is expressly said that an angel ‘appeared unto him out of heaven, strengthening him;’ therefore, where this awful and pathetic subject has been attempted in Art, there is propriety in introducing a visible angel. Notwithstanding the latitude thus allowed to the imagination, or perhaps for that very reason, the greatest and the most intelligent painters have here fallen into strange errors, both in conception and in taste. For instance, is it not a manifest impropriety to take the Scripture phrase in a literal sense, and place a cup in the hand of the angel? Is not the word cup here, as elsewhere, used as a metaphor, signifying the destiny awarded by Divine will, as Christ had said before, ‘Ye shall drink of my cup,’ and as we say, ‘his cup overfloweth with blessings’? The angel, therefore, who does not bend from heaven to announce to him the decree he knew full well, nor to present the cup of bitterness, but to strengthen and comfort him, should not bear the cup;—still less the cross, the scourge, the crown of thorns, as in many pictures.
Where our Saviour appears bowed to the earth, prostrate, half swooning with the anguish of that dread moment, and an angel is seen sustaining him, there is a true feeling of the real meaning of Scripture; but even in such examples the effect is often spoiled by an attempt to render the scene at once more mystical and more palpable. Thus a painter equally remarkable for the purity of his taste and deep religious feeling, Niccolò Poussin, has represented Christ, in his agony, supported in the arms of an angel, while a crowd of child-angels, very much like Cupids, appear before him with the instruments of the Passion; ten or twelve bear a huge cross; others hold the scourge, the crown of thorns, the nails, the sponge, the spear, and exhibit them before him, as if these were the images, these the terrors, which could overwhelm with fear and anguish even the human nature of such a Being![46] It seems to me also a mistake, when the angel is introduced, to make him merely an accessory (as Raphael has done in one of his early pictures), a little figure in the air to help the meaning: since the occasion was worthy of angelic intervention, in a visible shape, bringing divine solace, divine sympathy, it should be represented under a form the most mighty and the most benign that Art could compass;—but has it been so? I can recollect no instance in which the failure has not been complete. If it be said that to render the angelic comforter so superior to the sorrowing and prostrate Redeemer would be to detract from His dignity as the principal personage of the scene, and thus violate one of the first rules of Art, I think differently—I think it could do so only in unskilful hands. Represented as it ought to be, and might be, it would infinitely enhance the idea of that unimaginable anguish which, as we are told, was compounded of the iniquities and sorrows of all humanity laid upon Him. It was not the pang of the Mortal, but the Immortal, which required the presence of a ministering spirit sent down from heaven to sustain him.
21 Lamenting Angel in a Crucifixion (Campo Santo)
In the Crucifixion, angels are seen lamenting, wringing their hands, averting or hiding their faces. In the old Greek crucifixions, one angel bears the sun, another the moon, on each side of the cross:—
... dim sadness did not spare,
That time, celestial visages.