In Etruscan Art all their divinities are winged; and where Venus is represented with wings, as in many of the antique gems (and by Correggio in imitation of them),[25] these brilliant wings are not, as some have supposed, emblematical of the _transitoriness_, but of the might, the majesty, and the essential divinity of beauty. In Scripture, the first mention of Cherubim with wings is immediately after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt (Exod. xxxi. 2). Bezaleel, the first artist whose name is recorded in the world’s history, and who appears to have been, like the greatest artists of modern times, at once architect, sculptor, and painter, probably derived his figures of Cherubim with outstretched wings, guarding the mercy-seat, from those Egyptian works of Art with which the Israelites must have been familiarised. Clement of Alexandria is so aware of the relative similitude, that he supposes the Egyptians to have borrowed from the Israelites, which is obviously the reverse of the truth. How far the Cherubim, which figure in the Biblical pictures of the present day, resemble the carved Cherubim of Bezaleel we cannot tell, but probably the idea and the leading forms are the same: for the ark, we know, was carried into Palestine; these original Cherubim were the pattern of those which adorned the temple of Solomon, and these, again, were the prototype after which the imagery of the second temple was fashioned. Although in Scripture the shape under which the celestial ministers appeared to man is nowhere described, except in the visions of the prophets (Dan. x. 5), and there with a sort of dreamy incoherent splendour, rendering it most perilous to clothe the image placed before the fancy in definite forms, still the idea of wings, as the angelic appendages, is conveyed in many places distinctly, and occasionally with a picturesque vividness which inspires and assists the artist. For instance, in Daniel, ch. vii., ‘they had wings like a fowl.’ In Ezekiel, ch.i., ‘their wings were stretched upward when they flew; when they stood, they let down their wings:’ ‘I heard the noise of their wings as the noise of great waters:’ and in Zechariah, ch. v., ‘I looked, and behold there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings, for they had wings like the wings of a stork.’ And Isaiah, ch. vi., in the description of the Seraphim, ‘Each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.’ By the early artists this description was followed out in a manner more conscientious and reverential than poetical. [Illustration: 11 Seraph (Greek mosaic, Cathedral of Monreale)] They were content with a symbol. But mark how Milton, more daring, could paint from the same original:—