Thoughts on angels

Several weeks ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to visit the Meadows Museum in Dallas, TX.  This gem of culture in the notoriously homogeneous region of middle America is the legacy of oil tycoon Algur H. Meadows.  His generous contributions to the museum driven by his love for Spanish art has resulted in one of the best collections of Spanish art outside of the great Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.  While the Meadows museum prides itself on masterpieces of 17th century royal court paintings, what intrigued me that day was their assortment of religious artwork from approximately the same period, in particular their depictions of angels.  

Modern "Angels"

In December we attended the local Christmas pageant.  One of the coolest parts about small-town Christmas pageants is that all your neighbors bring their own real animals to be the sheep!  Anyways, we were both amused when the fearsome Archangel Gabriel appeared to the shepherds in the form of the most adorable little eight year old girl you have ever seen.  She did a wonderful job, and the shepherds graciously feigned fear.  But something was inevitably amiss.

I hope it is little surprise to you my dear reader, that the modern imagination of what an "angel" is may be deficient.  The vast majority of modern artistic renderings of angels exude weakness and vulnerability. Even the more militaristic depictions lack a certain sense of danger that ought to be unmistakable.  Most are, at best, pleasant and peaceful; at worst they can be ridiculous and even pornographic.

This image of what an "angel" is and how one behaves has even crept into our language.  If someone describes their child as an "angel", it typically means they are sweet and gentle and don't break anything.

Biblical Angels

What are angels really like?  While I lack both the proper time and expertise to give a complete theological treatise on angels, it will suffice to say they are powerful and terrifying.  In almost every recorded encounter in the Bible, the human's first reaction upon seeing an angel is fear.  Angels typically begin every sentence with "Yo chill out bro" (The Message translation).  Angels are not just scary looking either.  Humans have good reason to be afraid of them.  In 2 Kings 19:35 one angel is sent out to engage the Assyrian army.  He kills 185,000 battle hardened soldiers overnight.  This is more than the immediate effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, combined.  Fat Man and Little Boy took 4 years of research, thousands of workers, and about $5,000,000,000 each.  Perhaps more similarly to the bombs, it was two angels who nuked Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:12) while sheltering a small nearby city from the blast for Lot to escape to.  Further, none of these angels were even named.  I think it is not unreasonable to surmise that the angels whose names are recorded (Michael for sure, possibly Gabriel) may be significantly more dangerous. 

It should be noted that angels in the Bible serve a number of purposes, from slaughtering armies to bringing messages and even providing comfort to Jesus in the desert.  But even in the least menacing example, angels are never described as "babies with wings".  

Renaissance "Angels"

Thanks to a very good Bible study teacher, I had been aware of the disconnect between between modern "angels" and the true Biblical descriptions. But I always assumed that this was a relatively recent distortion.  This is why I was surprised to realize back in the Meadows Museum, that the majority of the angels looked like babies.  Putti I think is the proper artistic definition.  Only one depiction of an angel even had a sword (an older image of Michael), the rest were cute kids with wings, or even (grotesquely I thought) babies heads with wings.  I couldn't help but wonder where the disconnect began between the descriptions of angels I've read about in the Bible, and the angels depicted in our art.  

A quick (and entirely unscientific) Google search later, the trend of angels as "babies" actually stems from Greek and Roman (pagan) mythology and were associated with Eros and Cupid.  The winged baby imagery was adapted by Renaissance era artists (specifically Donatello), and consequently often confused with cherubim and angels.  Further, it appears that angels were not depicted with wings at all until around 400 AD.  At that time, wings were apparently introduced not because angels actually have wings, but because the artists needed some way to depict the fact that their subjects were, as they say in small town America, "not from 'round here".  

"Real" Angels?

At last I realized my error.  The art in the Meadows Museum was symbolic.  The angels had wings because the artists needed some way to symbolize their heavenly nature. Indeed much of the art of that time was deeply symbolic.  In contrast, modern artistic styles trend more toward realism.  Hollywood especially has saturated our culture in recent times with the most realistic renderings of otherwise invisible scenes (scenes that had to be painted 'symbolically').  However the familiar habit of attaching wings to child-like angels has not been discarded to match this trend.  As a result, when the modern mind sees a picture of an angel with wings, we naturally assume that is what angels look like in real life. We are accustomed to seeing things portrayed realistically.  

I'm not saying either artistic form is better or worse than the other.  They are different forms expressing the same ideas with vastly different technologies.  I believe that the incredible advances in visual simulation technology of the last decade has finally given us the ability to portray angels realistically, to a modern realistic mind.  While we may never make a movie that is perfectly accurate in its portrayal of an angel (height, eye color, weapons), we can now make large strides towards presenting angels in a way that will more accurately impress upon the modern mind their true Biblical essence.  

With that, I humbly present what is in my opinion, the best modern depiction of an angel to be created thus far, from the recent superhero movie "Thor".  Crank up the volume.