Angels

[poliphilo]

"What sex is an angel?" asks pondhopper. Well, neither, obviously. An angel is a spirit and spirits are genderless. For the purpose of communicating with humankind they may assume a gender- or allow us to impose one on them- but in their own element they're neither one thing nor the other.

I went looking for pictures of angels. Most artists get it. Most pictures of angels- from medieval wall paintings to renaissance altarpieces to Russian icons- have angels who are superbly androgyne. Only in the 20th century- with the tradition broken and artists all at sea- do you get the odd, obviously gendered angel- either curvaceously feminine, or rippingly male. I don't like these gendered angels. They're wrong. There are things higher and holier than sex- and angels, dropping down into this lower realm to the sound of rebecks and viols, remind us of this. Their beauty- as the best artists have laboured to realise- is a beauty of the beyond. 



The Archangel Michael: Rogier Van Der Weyden.

Comments

[mummm.livejournal.com]

I believe that in the distant past almost every spiritual figure was portrayed as male. The name Michael is certainly male, yes?
God= male, Christ= (logically) male, Angels= male. Female spiritual figures were very limited except for Mary and Mary Magdalene, and a (very) few others. I attribute that to the attitude about females during those times, and the male writers of biblical items. It is only much more recently that angels are portrayed as female.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think Michael, Gabriel, Raphael etc are first and foremost the names of angels and only secondarily names given to human males. I'll agree that the popular prejudice is to regard angels as male, but I'd want to argue that that is all it is- a prejudice. Angels- as spirits- are beyond sex- and the tradition in art has always been to represent them as androgynous.

[mummm.livejournal.com]

You are most likely correct. To be honest, it was never something I thought about. I guess I thought that most angels were supposed to be the souls of the formerly living and therefore kept their gender identity... child's viewpoint I guess.