[Illustration: PERUGINO: BAPTISM OF CHRIST (detail)]
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.