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Column
Dont overlook the unlikely
angels
By JEANNETTE BATZ
All of a sudden everybodys got a guardian angel but me. They
wear its pin, they know its name, theyre convinced its looking out
for them.
I have felt blessed. I have felt lucky. I have never felt guarded
by a winged being. Just as this is beginning to worry me, I learn that the St.
Louis Art Museum is hosting Angels from the Vatican all summer
(courtesy of Chrysler, whose logo just happens to be winged). Surrounded by
films and feasts, choral music and angelic gifts, this is billed as a
once-in-any-lifetime exhibition featuring nearly 2,500 years of angels in more
than 100 works of art.
Surely I will find mine among them.
I attach myself to the media tour, deftly led by Fr. Allen Duston,
representative of the Pontifical Commission to the Patrons of the Arts in the
Vatican Museums. Aah, I think delightedly, patrons. In the Renaissance, their
money fed greatness. Today, we are informed, patrons here in the U.S. fund
restorations for the Vatican collection. Dustons task was to put together
an exhibit at their request, comprised of pieces that could travel. Angels
being so popular these days. ...
According to Chryslers Angels Unveiled survey
(dont these people have cars to make?) more than 75 percent of Americans
believe in angels, a whopping 93.8 percent in the South-Central region. And
yes, its the sweetly vigilant guardian angels theyre most familiar
with. Only 2.9 percent know of the seraphim, so near to Gods glory that
their wings blaze fiery red.
Standing beside Eddie Silva, a smart, droll arts editor from the
newspaper where I work, I hear him mutter, If anybody ever really saw an
angel, theyd be terrified. Eddies interested in
angels, not wishfully, but archetypically; he wants to know why theyve
cropped up in nearly every religion since time began. The Greeks had
lasas, graceful female household spirits; the Jews saw angels
everywhere; the Muslims had their own version; and angels hovered over all the
major events of Christianity.
After a full 24 years of Roman Catholic education, all I can tell
Eddie is that angels come in handy, Fed-Ex intermediaries between the divine
will and our not-always-receptive hearts. They inspire and assist, they dance
on the heads of pins (a practice Ive always found a bit showoffish) and
they make the music of the celestial spheres. Why music? Because it is an
intermediary in its own right, capable of turning passionate, inarticulate
emotion into sound, connecting mind and body, gathering motley groups into
harmony.
But back to the exhibit, which opens, of course, with angels.
These two, their terra cotta glazed, valiantly hold up the coat of arms of Pope
Innocent VIII so we can step through the entryway beneath the protection of
their wings. Inside the first room, the first sight startles: a feathery-winged
genius, partly human and partly divine, sent by the gods to guard the Tree of
Life in an Assyrian temple 900 years before Christ. I like the inclusion, a
generous act in a religion that could easily pretend it started everything. I
like the etymology, too -- genius, now known as cool intellect, taking
its first purpose from God, just as brilliance and illumination
drew their first light from divine wisdom.
Catty-cornered to the genius (as is so often the case) stands
Eros, his penis broken off. Id blame the Vatican, except that the penis
always seems to break off of ancient statues, perhaps reminding us how
temporary and fragile its power can be.
In the next room, we see Nike, the winged goddess of victory sent
to help people win the battle of life (or slam-dunk the winning basket). Duston
reminds us that such figures later influenced Christian iconography -- although
it would take four centuries distance from paganism before a Christian
dared wing his angels. (The wings signal omnipotence. Which may be why
Ive never had one of those I can fly! dreams, either.)
So far, most of the images in this show are distinctly
unterrifying. Angels wait in attendance; dimple with seductively innocent
charm; float softly overhead; lend reassurance or inspire greatness. One grows,
if one dares to admit it, bored with their beauty. When we reach the year 1435,
were standing before a glowing tempera-on-wood painting by Fra Angelico.
Duston tells us that he was called the angelic painter because he rendered
these beings so exquisitely.
Could there be an ugly angel? I wonder abruptly. There
are dark angels, of course, notable for the chiaroscuro of their fall from
light. But even Lucifer, with his occasional bat wings and horned head, is
perversely beautiful.
At first, this realization angers me. But as I walk past Salvador
Dalis refreshingly unsentimental canvas, I see that even his scribbled
angels are dancing gracefully in the vast brown-gold space. If angels truly
make the invisible visible, if they are here to represent the divine to us, how
could we make them ugly? Or mean-spirited, or grubby? If angels are, by
definition, not limited by flesh, how could they be awkward or homely,
qualities that inevitably limit us?
After the Music-Makers come the Consoling Angels, and here Duston
mentions the traditional belief that everyone is given a guardian angel at
birth. By now, mines probably in the corner with his head in his
hands.
Im ready to join him when we tour the gift shop: angelic
Post-its; magnets; lollipops; ornaments; key chains; cassettes; flashlights;
pop-up books; puzzles; paper dolls; snow globes and Shrink-a-Doo. In grand
finale, there are transparent pens in which Michelangelos Adam, when
tilted, floats toward Gods outstretched finger.
About to groan in self-righteous art-snobbery, I suddenly remember
a poem by Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us to the Things of This
World:
Outside the open window, The morning air is all awash
with angels.
Some are in bed sheets, some in blouses, Some are in
smocks, but truly there they are. Now they are rising together in calm
swells Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear With the deep joy
of their impersonal breathing.
Messages from God are everywhere, even on the clothesline. Even in
a translucent plastic pen, or a pretty little angel too sweet to terrify.
Whats really terrifying is the chance that, because they
dont look as sweet or as ugly, as mundane or as mysterious as we think
they should, we wont recognize them. Well expend our whole lives,
entertaining angels unawares.
Jeannette Batz is a senior editor at the Riverfront Times,
an alternative newspaper in St. Louis, and a regular columnist in NCR.
National Catholic Reporter, August 14,
1998
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