There were winged figures in Egyptian, Chaldean, and Assyrian art, deities of the air, goddesses of the cloud and the heavens. The Hittite and the Persian produced the winged Sphinx, and the Greek the winged Victory that flew above the advancing host and pointed the way to glory. This winged Victory of the Greeks probably suggested the Christian angel; though the immediate forerunner of the angel was found in the Cupid and Psyche of Roman art. The Christians, following the Romans, took over in their art much of the material of the old Roman world. They had to do this; for Christianity was without form in art, and the early Christians decried it as idolatrous. But later on there came a demand for telling the Bible stories in form and color, that people might see what they could not read. Then Christianity, answering the demand, took up Roman forms and gave them Christian significance. They took the Cupids of Roman art and turned them into Cherubs, and out of the winged Victories and Psyches they made ministering angels. [Illustration: PERUGINO: CHERUB HEAD (detail)] The pagan form was soon forgotten in the Christian spirit, and the angels of the Gothic and early Renaissance periods developed a new meaning, a new soul. What beautiful sentiment, what profound feeling, the early painters put into the angel of the Annunciation! What a world of pathos and sadness they gave the angel seated by the tomb of Christ! What gladness and joy to the angels of the Nativity standing near the Madonna or singing the _Gloria in Excelsis_ in the upper sky! According to tradition, the angels know neither gladness nor sadness, neither wrath nor pity. They are heavenly messengers obeying the mandates of the Most High, without emotion or feeling of any kind. But the old masters of Italy did not so regard them. They gave them human characteristics, made them emotional and sympathetic, painted them in robes of blue, of red, of gold, of white, and gave them faces and forms that were human, it is true, but as near divine as earthly thought could render them. CHERUBIM AND SERAPHIM The red-robed angels (they were painted red of face as well as of robe) were the Seraphim, the angels of love, and nearest to God. Often with the early painters only their heads were shown, with wings crossed in front of them, sometimes with four, six, or eight wings. The blue-robed angels were the Cherubim, the angels of knowledge, and they too were shown in their heads only, with many crossed wings. They appeared in groups and halos surrounding the presence of the Father, the Son, or the Virgin. The cherubs or _putti_ of later Italian art, so frequently seen with the Madonna and Child, are the artistic descendants of the Seraphim and Cherubim. They are seen in the large aureoles of light that surround the Madonna; for instance, in Raphael's "Sistine Madonna" and Titian's "Assumption of the Virgin." They recede into the background or come forward in clouds as the countless hosts of heaven.