_Lat._ Sanctus Gabriel. _Ital._ San Gabriello, San Gabriele, L’Angelo
Annunziatore. _Fr._ St. Gabriel.
‘I am GABRIEL, that stand in the presence of God.’—_Luke_ i. 19.
In those passages of Scripture where the Angel Gabriel is mentioned by
name, he is brought before us in the character of a Messenger only,
and always on important occasions. In the Old Testament he is sent
to Daniel to announce the return of the Jews from captivity, and to
explain the vision which prefigures the destinies of mighty empires.
His contest with the Angel of the kingdom of Persia, when St. Michael
comes to his assistance, would be a splendid subject in fit hands;
I do not know that it has ever been painted. In the New Testament
the mission of Gabriel is yet more sublime: he first appears to the
high priest Zacharias, and foretells the birth of John the Baptist,—a
subject which belongs especially to the life of that saint. Six months
later, Gabriel is sent to announce the appearance of the Redeemer of
mankind.[89]
In the Jewish tradition, Gabriel is the guardian of the celestial
treasury. Hence, I presume, Milton has made him chief guardian of
Paradise:—
Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,
Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night.
As the Angel who announced the birth of Christ, he has been venerated
as the Angel who presides over childbirth. He foretells the birth of
Samson, and, in the apocryphal legends, he foretells to Joachim the
birth of the Virgin. In the East, he is of great importance. Mahomet
selected him as his immediate teacher and inspirer, and he became
the great protecting angel of Islamism: hence between Michael, the
protector of the Jews and Christians, and Gabriel, the protector of
the Moslem, there is supposed to exist no friendly feeling—rather the
reverse.
In the New Testament, Gabriel is a much more important personage than
Michael; yet I have never met with any picture in which he figures
singly as an object of worship. In devotional pictures he figures as
the second of the three Archangels—‘Secondo fra i primi,’ as Tasso
styles him; or in his peculiar character as the divine messenger of
grace, ‘_l’Angelo annunziatore_.’ He then usually bears in one hand a
lily or a sceptre; in the other a scroll on which is inscribed, ‘AVE
MARIA, GRATIA PLENA!’[90]
The subject called the ANNUNCIATION is one of the most frequent and
most important, as it is one of the most beautiful, in the whole range
of Christian Art. It belongs, however, to the history of the Virgin,
where I shall have occasion to treat it at length; yet as the Angel
Gabriel here assumes, by direct scriptural testimony, a distinct name
and personality, and as the dignity and significance proper to a
subject so often unworthily and perversely treated depend very much on
the character and deportment given to the celestial messenger, I shall
make a few observations in this place with respect to the treatment of
the angel, only reserving the theme in its general bearing for future
consideration.
In the early representations of the Annunciation it is treated as
a religious mystery, and with a solemn simplicity and purity of
feeling, which is very striking and graceful in itself, as well as
in harmony with the peculiar manner of the divine revelation. The
scene is generally a porch or portico of a temple-like building; the
Virgin stands (she is very seldom seated, and then on a kind of raised
throne); the angel stands before her, at some distance: very often,
she is within the portico; he is without. Gabriel is a majestic being,
generally robed in white, wearing the tunic and pallium _à l’antique_,
his flowing hair bound by a jewelled tiara, with large many-coloured
wings, and bearing the sceptre of sovereignty in the left hand, while
the right is extended in the act of benediction as well as salutation:
‘Hail! thou that art highly favoured! Blessed art thou among women!’ He
is the principal figure: the attitude of the Virgin, with her drapery
drawn over her head, her eyes drooping, and her hands folded on her
bosom, is always expressive of the utmost submission and humility. So
Dante introduces the image of the lowly Virgin receiving the angel as
an illustration of the virtue of Humility:—
Ed avea in atto impressa esta favella
‘Ecce ancilla Dei!’—
and Flaxman has admirably embodied this idea, both in the lofty angel
with outspread arms, and the kneeling Virgin. Sometimes the angel
floats in, with his arms crossed over his bosom, but still with the air
of a superior being, as in this beautiful figure after Lorenzo Monaco,
from a picture in the Florence Gallery.
[Illustration: 42]
The two figures are not always in the same picture; it was a very
general custom to place the Virgin and the Angel, the ‘Annunziata’
and the ‘Angelo annunziatore,’ one on each side of the altar, the
place of the Virgin being usually to the right of the spectator;
sometimes the figures are half-length: sometimes, when placed in the
same picture, they are in two separate compartments, a pillar, or some
other ornament, running up the picture between them; as in many old
altar-pieces, where the two figures are placed above or on each side of
the Nativity, or the Baptism, or the Marriage at Cana, or some other
scene from the life and miracles of our Saviour. This subject does not
appear on the sarcophagi; the earliest instance I have met with is in
the mosaic series over the arch in front of the choir in the church
of Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome, executed in the fifth century. Here
we have two successive moments represented together. In the first the
angel is sent on his mission, and appears flying down from heaven;
the earliest instance I have seen of an angel in the act of flight.
In the second group the Virgin appears seated on a throne; two angels
stand behind her, supposed to represent her guardian angels, and the
angel Gabriel stands in front with one hand extended. The dresses are
classical, and there is not a trace of the mediæval feeling, or style,
in the whole composition.
In the Greek pictures, the Angel and the Virgin both stand; and in the
Annunciation of Cimabue the Greek formula is strictly adhered to. I
have seen pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which
Gabriel enters as a princely ambassador, with three little angels
bearing up his mantle behind: in a picture in the collection of Prince
Wallerstein, one meek and beautiful angel bears up the rich robes of
the majestic archangel, like a page in the train of a sovereign prince.
But from the beginning of the fourteenth century we perceive a change
of feeling, as well as a change of style: the veneration paid to the
Virgin demanded another treatment. She becomes not merely the principal
person, but the superior being; she is the ‘Regina angelorum,’ and the
angel bows to her, or kneels before her as to a queen.[91] Thus in the
famous altar-piece at Cologne, the angel kneels; he bears a sceptre,
and also a sealed roll, as if he were a celestial ambassador delivering
his credentials: about the same period we sometimes see the angel
merely with his hands folded over his breast, and his head inclined,
delivering his message as if to a superior being.
[Illustration: 43 The Angel Gabriel (Wilhelm of Cologne. 1440)]
I cannot decide at what period the lily first replaced the sceptre in
the hand of the angel, not merely as the emblem of purity, but as the
symbol of the Virgin from the verse in the Canticles usually applied
to her: ‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley.’ A lily
is often placed in a vase near the Virgin, or in the foreground of the
picture: of all the attributes placed in the hand of the angel, the
lily is the most usual and the most expressive.
The painters of Siena, who often displayed a new and original sentiment
in the treatment of a subject, have represented the angel Gabriel as
the announcer of ‘peace on earth;’ he kneels before the Virgin, crowned
with olive, and bearing a branch of olive in his hand, as in a picture
by Taddeo Bartoli. There is also a beautiful St. Gabriel by Martin
Schoen, standing, and crowned with olive. So Dante—
L’ angel che venne in terra col decreto
Della molt’ anni lagrimata pace.
Another passage in Dante which the painters seem to have had before
them shows us the Madonna as queen, and the angel as adoring:—
‘Qual è quel angel che con tanto giuoco
Guarda negli occhi la nostra regina
Innamorato sì che par di fuoco?’
Ed egli a me,—‘Baldezza e leggiadria
Quanta esser puote in angelo ed in alma
Tutta è in lui, e si volem che sia!’
It is in seeking this _baldezza e leggiadria_ in a mistaken sense that
the later painters have forgotten all the spiritual dignity of the
Angel Messenger.
Where the angel bears a lighted taper, which the Virgin extends her
hand to take from him; or, kneeling, bears in his hand a palm-branch,
surmounted by seven or twelve stars (44), the subject represented is
not the announcement of the birth of the Saviour, but the death of
the Virgin, a part of her legendary history which is rarely treated
and easily mistaken; then the announcing angel is not Gabriel, but
Michael.[92]
[Illustration: 44 Angel announcing the death of the Virgin (F. Filippo
Lippi)]
In old German Art, the angel in the Annunciation is habited in priestly
garments richly embroidered (42). The scene is often the bedroom of
the Virgin; and while the announcing angel enters and kneels at the
threshold of the door, the Holy Ghost enters at the window. I have
seen examples in which Gabriel, entering at a door behind the Virgin,
unfolds his official ‘Ave Maria.’ He has no lily, or sceptre, and she
is apparently conscious of his presence without seeing him.[93]
But in the representations of the sixteenth century we find neither
the solemnity of the early Italian nor the naïveté of the early German
school; and this divine subject becomes more and more materialised
and familiarised, until, losing its spiritual character, it strikes
us as shockingly prosaic. One cannot say that the angel is invariably
deficient in dignity, or the Virgin in grace. In the Venetian
school and the Bologna school we find occasionally very beautiful
Annunciations; but in general the half-draped fluttering angels and the
girlish-looking Virgins are nothing less than offensive; and in the
attempt to vary the sentiment, the _naturalisti_ have here run the
risk of being much _too_ natural.
[Illustration: 45 The Archangel Gabriel (Van Eyck)]
In the Cathedral at Orvieto, the Annunciation is represented in front
of the choir by two colossal statues by Francesco Mochi: to the right
is the angel Gabriel, poised on a marble cloud, in an attitude so
fantastic that he looks as if he were going to dance; on the other side
stands the Virgin, conceived in a spirit how different!—yet not less
mistaken; she has started from her throne; with one hand she grasps
it, with the other she seems to guard her person against the intruder:
majesty at once, and fear, a look of insulted dignity, are in the
air and attitude,—‘_par che minacci e tema nel tempo istesso_’—but I
thought of Mrs. Siddons while I looked, not of the Virgin Mary.
This fault of sentiment I saw reversed, but equally in the extreme, in
another example—a beautiful miniature.[94] The Virgin, seated on the
side of her bed, sinks back alarmed, almost fainting; the angel in a
robe of crimson, with a white tunic, stands before her, half turning
away and grasping his sceptre in his hand, with a proud commanding air,
like a magnificent surly god—a Jupiter who had received a repulse.
I pass over other instances conceived in a taste even more
blamable—Gabriels like smirking, winged lord chamberlains; and Virgins,
half prim, half voluptuous—the sanctity and high solemnity of the event
utterly lost. Let this suffice for the present: I may now leave the
reader to his own feeling and discrimination.