person, but the superior being; she is the 'regina angelorum,' and
the angel bows to her, or kneels before her, as to a queen. Thus,
in the famous altar-piece at Cologne, the angel kneels; he bears
the sceptre, and also a sealed roll, as if he were a celestial
ambassador delivering his credentials. About the same period we
sometimes see the angel merely with his hands folded over his
breast, and his head inclined, delivering his message as if to a
superior being."
It is a great merit in this work of Mrs Jameson's, that we are not
only referred to the most curious and to the best specimens of art,
but have likewise beautiful woodcuts, and some etchings admirably
executed by Mrs Jameson's own hand in illustration. There is a
greatness in the simplicity of Blake's angels: "The morning stars
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Poor Blake!
Yet why say poor? he was happy in his visions--a little before his
time, and one of whom the world (of art) in his day were not worthy:
though, with a wild extravagance of fancy, his creations were his
faith, often great, and always gentle. Exquisitely beautiful are the
"angels of the planets" from Raffaelle, and copied by Mrs Jameson
from Gruner's engravings of the frescoes of the Capella Chigiana.
That great painter of mystery, Rembrandt, whom the mere lovers of
form would have mistakenly thought it a profanation to commission
with an angelic subject, is justly appreciated. A perfect master
of light, and of darkness, and of colour, it mattered not what
were the forms, so that they were unearthly, that plunged into or
broke through his luminous or opaque. Of the picture in the Louvre
it is thus remarked: "Miraculous for true and spirited expression,
and for the action of the soaring angel, who parts the clouds and
strikes through the air like a strong swimmer through the waves of
the sea." Strange--but so it is--we cannot conceive an alteration of
his pictures, all parts so agree. Attention to the more beautiful
in form would have appeared to him a mistrust in his great gift
of colour and chiaroscuro; and, stranger still, that without, and
seemingly in a marked defiance of mere beauty, he is, we would
almost say never, vulgar, never misses the intended sentiment,
nor fails where it is of tenderness, even of feminine tenderness,
for which, if he does not give beauty, he gives its equivalent in
the fulness of the feeling. We instance his Salutation--Elizabeth
and the Virgin Mary. There is something terrifically grand in the
crouching angel in the Campo Santo,--not in the form, nor in the
face, which is mostly hid, but in the conception of the attitude
of horror with which he beholds the awful scene. It is from the
Last Judgment of Orcagua in the Campo Santo. We must not speak of
Rubens as a painter of angels; and, for real angelic expression,
perhaps the earlier painters are the best. It is surprising that
Mrs Jameson, from whose refined taste, and from whose sense of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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