Word: angels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...concept of an angel," wrote one recent student of the creatures, Theodora Ward, in Men and Angels, "is peculiar to the monotheistic religions, in which the immensity of the power concentrated in one universal god must somehow be channeled to reach the needs of man, as a great river may be diverted into a system of ducts to irrigate fields." But how to embody this concept? The first angels in Christian art look like ordinary men, whether painted on catacomb walls or preserved in mosaic on the 5th century walls of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. What the artist stresses...
...sign by which angels are known today-wings- did not appear for some time. Pre-Christian mythology abounded with winged, supernatural beings, and the Christian angel annexed the symbolic properties of wings-mobility, ascension, elevation and refinement of consciousness, power to move freely between Heaven and Earth. All the same, there were difficulties of symbolization, which is why the distinctions that early theologians drew between various levels of angels did not endure in art. The thrones, in their ceaseless orbit around God, were sometimes depicted as winged wheels, whose hubs were studded with eyes-to indicate their power...
Cherubim and seraphim were sometimes interchangeable. The traditional pattern for both consisted of a head, hands, feet and six wings-one pair pointing down, one pair up, and the third pair spread to fly. It was a formula that could achieve a hierarchic majesty-no angelic being radiates more effortless authority than the mosaic cherub in St. Mark's in Venice, unfurling his blue wings against a blaze of gold mosaic. In the general humanization of angels during the Renaissance, the cherub's presence quickly succumbed. He became crossed with the amoretti, or baby cupids, of antiquity...
...most often painted was Gabriel, the angel of the Annunciation, sent by God to disclose to Mary that she would give birth to Christ. In the history of a civilization that abounded in images of the Madonna, Gabriel recurred insistently, whether as the impassive, rhythmically contorted enamel figure on the 11th century cover of the Ariberto breviary in Milan or the rainbow-winged presence, solid as a Doric column, who confronts a submissive Mary in Fra Angelico's Annunciation...
...Gabriel's functions was to preside over Paradise, and this he shared with Michael. The resonant titles of the Archangel Michael read like a blast on the horn of resurrection: chief of the order of virtues, chief of archangels, prince of the presence, angel of repentance, righteousness, mercy, sanctification . . . and, by decree of Pope Pius XII in 1950, the patron angel of policemen. In painting, his main roles were two: driving the rebel angels down to Hell (Michael replaced the fallen Lucifer as chief angel of Heaven) and weighing the souls of the dead, as in Memling...