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 overflowed 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! 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

The picture is, I suspect, not by Poussin, but by Stella. There is another, similar, by Guido; Louvre, 1057.

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.

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."

Michael Angelo gives us two un-winged colossal-looking angel heads, which peer out of heaven in the background of his Crucifixion in a manner truly supernatural, as if they sympathised in the consummation, but in awe rather than in grief.

Angels also receive in golden cups the blood which flows from the wounds of our Saviour. This is a representation which has the authority of some of the most distinguished and most spiritual among the old painters, but it is to my taste particularly unpleasing and unpoetical. Raphael, in an early picture, the only crucifixion he ever painted, thus introduces the angels; and this form of the angelic ministry is a mystical version of the sacrifice of the Redeemer not uncommon in Italian and German pictures of the sixteenth century.

As the scriptural and legendary scenes in which angels form the poetical machinery will be discussed hereafter in detail as separate subjects, I shall conclude these general and preliminary remarks with a

few words on the characteristic style in which the principal painters have set forth the angelic forms and attributes.

It appears that, previous to the end of the fourth century, there were religious scruples which forbade the representation of angels, arising perhaps from the scandal caused in the early Church by the worship paid to these supernatural beings, and so strongly opposed by the primitive teachers. We do not find on any of the Christian relics of the first three centuries, neither in the catacombs, nor on the vases or the sarcophagi, any figure which could be supposed to represent what we call an angel. On one of the latest sarcophagi, we find little winged figures, but evidently the classical winged genii, used in the classical manner as ornament only. In the second council of Nice, John of Thessalonica maintained that angels have the human form, and may be so represented; and the Jewish doctors had previously decided that God consulted his angels when he said, "Let us make man after our image," and that consequently we may suppose the angels to be like men, or, in the words of the prophet, "like unto the similitude of the sons of men. (Dan. x. 16.)

But it is evident that, in the first attempt at angelic effigy, it was deemed necessary, in giving the human shape, to render it as superhuman, as imposing, as possible: colossal proportions, mighty overshadowing wings, kingly attributes, these we find in the earliest figures of angels which I believe exist - the mosaics in the church of Santa Agata at Ravenna (A. D. 400). Christ is seated on a throne (as in the early sarcophagi): he holds the Gospel in one hand, and with the left gives the benediction. An angel stands on each side: they have large wings, and bear a silver wand, the long sceptre of the Grecian kings ; they are robed in classical drapery, but wear the short pallium (the "garb succinct for flight"); their feet are sandaled, as prepared for a journey, and their hair bound by a fillet. Except in the wings and short pallium, they resemble the figures of Grecian kings and priests in the ancient bas-reliefs.

This was the truly majestic idea of an angelic presence (in contradistinction to the angelic emblem), which, well or ill executed, prevailed during the first ten centuries. In the MS.3 already referred to as con

1 Ciampini, p. 131. A p. 394. 2 Greek MS. A.D. 867. 3 Paris, Bib. Nat., No. 510.

taining such magnificent examples of this Godlike form and bearing, I selected one group less ruined than most of the others; Jacob wrestling with the angel. The drawing is wonderful for the period, that of Charlemagne; and see how the mighty Being grasps the puny mortal, who was permitted for a while to resist him!" He touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh, and it was out of joint," the action is as significant as possible. In the original, the drapery of the angel is white; the fillet binding the hair, the sandals, and the wings, of purple and gold.

This lank, formal angel is from the GrecoItalian school of the eleventh century. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the forms of the angels became, like all things in the then de

graded state of Byzantine Art, merely conventional. They are attired either in the imperial or the sacerdotal vestments, as already described, and are richly ornamented, tasteless and stiff, large without grandeur, and in general ill drawn: as in these figures from Monreale (24.).

24

Greek Angels. (Cathedral of Monreale. Eleventh century.)

On the revival of Art, we find the Byzantine idea of angels everywhere prevailing. The angels in Cimabue's famous "Virgin and Child enthroned" are grand creatures, rather stern; but this arose, I think, from his inability to express beauty. The colossal angels at Assisi (A. D. 1270), solemn sceptred kingly forms, all alike in action and attitude, appeared to me magnificent (30.).

In the angels of Giotto (A. D. 1310) we see the commencement of a softer grace and a purer taste, further developed by some of his scholars. Benozzo Gozzoli and Orcagna have left in the Campo Santo examples of the most graceful and fanciful treatment. Of Benozzo's angels in the Riccardi palace I have spoken at length. His master Angelico (worthy the name !) never reached the same power of expressing the rapturous rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable (A. D. 1430); it is only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which