nd sing.

* * * * *

Correggio's angels are grand and lovely, but they are like children
enlarged and sublimated, not like spirits taking the form of
children; where they smile it is truly--as Annibal Caracci expresses
it--con una naturalezza et simplicita che innamora e sforza a ridere
con loro: but the smile in many of Correggio's angel heads has
something sublime and spiritual, as well as simple and natural.

And Titian's angels impress me in a similar manner--I mean those in
the glorious "Assumption" at Venice--with their childish forms and
features, but an expression caught from beholding the face of "our
Father that is in heaven:" it is glorified in fancy. I remember
standing before this picture, contemplating those lovely spirits, one
after another, until a thrill came over me like that which I felt
when Mendelssohn played the organ--I became music while I listened.
The face of one of those angels is to the face of a child just what
that of the Virgin in the same picture is compared with the fairest
of the daughters of earth: it is not here superiority of beauty, but
mind, and music, and love kneaded, as it were, into form and colour.

But Raphael, excelling in all things, is here excellent above all;
his angels combine in a higher degree than any other, the various
faculties and attributes in which the fancy loves to clothe these
pure, immortal, beatified creatures. The angels of Giotti, of
Benozzo, of Fiesole, are, if not female, feminine; those of Filippo
Lippi and of Andrea, masculine; but you cannot say of those of
Raphael, that they are masculine or feminine. The idea of sex is
wholly lost in the blending of power, intelligence, and grace. In
his early pictures, grace is the predominant characteristic, as in
the dancing and singing angels in his "Coronation of the Virgin." In
his later pictures the sentiment in his ministering angels is more
spiritual, more dignified. As a perfect example of grand and
poetical feeling, I may cite the angels as "Regents of the Planets,"
in the Capella Chigiana. The cupola represents in a circle the
creation of the solar system, according to the theological and
astronomical (or rather astrological) notions which then prevailed--a
hundred years before "the starry Galileo and his woes." In the
centre is the Creator; around, in eight compartments, we have, first,
the angel of the celestial sphere, who seems to be listening to the
divine mandate: "Let there be lig