Everybody has an image of angels, those nice looking young people with wings who fly around in heaven and hobnob with the Holy Family and the saints in religious art.
But what are angels? Where do they come from? What do they do? And why are they so popular now, as everything from recent books to TV series attests?
Such questions are occasioned by "The Invisible Made Visible: Angels from the Vatican," the exhibit that opens at the Walters Art Gallery today. A traveling show selected to demonstrate the breadth of the Vatican collections, it contains 98 works of art dating from a ninth- century B.C. Assyrian stone carving to a 1977 painting by Salvador Dali.
It includes a multitude of forms and materials from Greek ceramic pots tosilver and gold chalices, from church vestments to the cover of an account book, all showing angels.
"We were looking for something appealing to a large number of people not necessarily interested in art history," says the Rev. Allen Duston of the Vatican, one of the two selectors of the show's works. "Angels are very popular in American religious and secular culture."
Interest in them isn't new here. "There are engravings of Washington surrounded by angels, and Benjamin Franklin surrounded by angels," says Leonard Primiano, who teaches religious studies at Cabrini College outside Philadelphia and is an expert on folk and popular religion. Angel manifestations in the United States range from Victorian statues in cemeteries to the folk legend that people's dimples come from being touched by an angel at birth.
But the interest has increased big-time in the last decade or two.
"There are more than a dozen encyclopedia or dictionary type books on angels, accumulations of traditional knowledge, from the last 10 years," Primiano says. "Beyond decorating one's home at Christmas, there is every imaginable sort of decorating with angel iconography.
Angels on butter dishes, angels in the kitchen chandelier, angels on towels." Other cultural manifestations, from the television show "Touched by an Angel" to the prize-winning play "Angels in America," reflect the trend.
The approaching millennium is one explanation for this trend, says Duston. "Angels are in some way helping us to face the possibility of what's to come, to face God, if this is the end of time as some might think it is."
Primiano offers the theory that the recent wave of immigration has brought in a variety of religions, not only Judeo-Christian but Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and others. Their theologies are widely different, but they have in common angels or similar spiritual figures. "In the religiously pluralistic environment of contemporary America, they don't cause any denominational conflict," Primiano says.
And in an era marked by psychological alienation and physical violence, the angel offers an image of peace, gentleness, comfort and love. "Americans in general are fairly religious, and angels are understood as an intermediary between us and God," says Duston. "Angels don't hand over the Ten Commandments, they're not confrontative or demanding."
So "Angels from the Vatican" comes along at the right time to show people what, exactly, angels are.
For one thing, they are not dead people who have gone to heaven, sprouted wings and acquired harps. In Christian terms, angels are a higher form of being, created by God in his image.
Artists depict them in human form, but they actually don't have bodies and are therefore invisible, although they can take visible form on occasion. The archangel Gabriel is visible to the Virgin Mary in "Annunciation" scenes - such as the show's examples by Giovanni di Paolo and others - in which the angel announces that Mary will bear the child of God.
Because angels have no bodies they are asexual, but they are more often depicted as male because they are referred to as male in Scriptures. The archangels Michael and Gabriel have male names.
Angels, or at least the concept of the winged human figure, is older than Christianity. There are angels in the Old Testament, but the references are all written so the visual sources for Christian angels come from elsewhere.
They appear in Middle Eastern cultures, as shown by the Assyrian carving of a winged figure. More common sources are Greco-Roman. They include winged gods such as the god of love Eros (Greek) or Cupid (Roman), shown by the "Eros of Tespia" (second century), a Roman marble copy after an original Greek bronze by Lysippus (fourth century B.C.). There's also Hermes, the Greek messenger god, whose Roman counterpart is Mercury.
Angels of various types are mentioned in many places in the Bible, from Genesis and Exodus at the beginning of the Old Testament to the letters of St. Paul and the book of Apocalypse or Revelations in the New Testament. Medieval church scholars including St. Thomas Aquinas recognized a hierarchy of nine "choirs" including such esoteric ones as thrones, dominations, virtues, powers and principalities. But the best known ones are (from the highest order down) seraphim, cherubim, archangels and angels.
Seraphim have six wings, two of which cover their bodies from view. Cherubim have been popularly adapted as the fat little boy angels known as cherubs or putti. There are seven archangels, but only two of major importance in Christianity: Gabriel the messenger and Michael the warrior or defender, shown in armor and with a shield in di Paolo's "Saint Michael the Archangel" (about 1440).
Angels have three principal functions:
* Messengers - Sometimes they have specific missions, such as Gabriel's to the Virgin, but more generally they spread God's word.
* Guardians - They watch over saints and ordinary human beings, but not in the sense of protecting from harm or death. They help people choose good over evil, and therefore attain eternal life in heaven. For example, the angel who leads and points the way in "Young Saint John the Baptist and an Angel" (about 1340, possibly by Giovanni Baronzio). And thus the origin of the popular image of a person torn between the advice of an angel and a demon.
* To praise God - They are often shown as choirs, sometimes with instruments, singing and playing God's praises, as in Giovanni Battista Gaulli's "Concert of Angels" (about 1672).
Given angel popularity, "Angels from the Vatican" should prove a big draw. According to Joaneath Spicer, the Walters curator of renaissance and baroque art and Baltimore curator of the show, there's ample reason for even those who don't believe in angels to see the show.
"First, there are magnificent works of art in it," she says. "And two, it conveys something of the care that we all in a way long for. Most people would like to believe that the cosmos takes them into consideration."
What: "The Invisible Made Visible: Angels from the Vatican"
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m Tuesdays through Sundays (until 8 p.m. Thursdays and Nov. 27, Nov. 28,
Dec. 26, Jan. 2), through Jan. 3.
Where: The Walters Art Gallery, 600 N. Charles St.
Admission: By timed ticket, adults $12 weekends and $10 weekdays; seniors and college students $11 weekends and $9 weekdays; ages 6 to 17 $8.50 weekends, $6.50 weekdays. Tickets may be bought at the Walters and at TicketMaster locations, or by calling 410-752-1200 in the Baltimore area.
Phone: For recorded information on "Angels from the Vatican," 888-844-4242; Walters general number, 410-547-9000.
Pub Date: 11/08/98