A friend of mine is doing a Christmas bulletin board for her class and she wants to cover it in angels of all shapes and sizes and art styles. (It’s an Episcopal school so no ACLU worth problems.) She asked me to pick her out some of the most beautiful angels- doesn’t matter if they’re by Rembrandt or an unknown absturdist, winged or otherwise. Google images has no shortage to pick and choose from of course, but out of curiosity- do you have any favorite angel art?
Some of my faves:
The art for the original Angels in America poster- the angel has the wings of a tropical bird. (A bit too dark for a children’s Christmas bulletin board of course, but this doesn’t have to be for the bulletin board.)
This angelby a local Montgomery artist of some renown, Mose T.
This vaguely humanoid being of light- more how I picture them (you can understand why most of the time they started with “don’t be afraid” when introducing themselves in the Bible)
This one hangs on the wall next to my bed. It’s sized to cover a king size bed - it’s HUGE! Weird thing is that we got it thinking it was a Goddess Brigid image, and we had it hanging up for almost three months before I realized it had wings and was in fact, an angel. I called my husband at work, and he wouldn’t believe me - he hadn’t noticed her wings before, either. Two weeks later, we noticed that the Celtic knotwork on the side said “Peace”. She’s known, in fact, as The Peace Angel.
This is my inner Uriel, despite all the details that are “wrong” according to mythologians. Uriel’s my favorite specific (arch)angel.
This one is a statue, but I love the Angel of Grief. Look for a wider shot of it, the body language of the whole angel is just so expressive, it’s really moving to me. Probably not appropriate for a holiday display, though.
This one. It is Bethesda Fountain in Central Park and it is one of the few images of angels that is a woman. Most angels are men or little boys so this one is a little bit unique.
I was raised Catholic and was told about the existence of guardian angels by my mom (a former nun). She didn’t actually believe in them, but enjoyed telling us how, when she was little, the teacher/nuns had the children sit a little off-centre at their desks to leave room for their guardian angels to sit beside them.
There was a specific prayer she was taught, and thiswas the painting we were shown on many an occasion.
While I am no longer Catholic, nor Christian (nor anything, for that matter), I still find the painting somewhat comforting. Perhaps your friend’s students might find it so, as well. I have no idea who the artist is, by the way. If anyone does, I’d love to know.
I have an guardian angle painting thats two kids sailing paper boats on a stream with an angel standing behind them on the bank. I’ve never seen it anywhere else though.
Yeah that is actually a biblicaly accurate description of seraphs.
ISA 6:2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they
covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they
were flying.
San Miguel de Aralar (you can google it like that), not so much because of the value of the image itself (it’s a processional host carrier) as for the legend behind it.
