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La caduta degli angeli ribelli

Apocalisse 12:7-17
“7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and
his angels,
8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any
more in heaven.
9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent,
called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole
world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels
were cast out with him.”
Having obtained a degree in the history of art, I have an endless source of subjects for reinterpretation into new sculptures.  To choose something like The Fall of the Rebel Angels,  painted by Pieter Brueghel the Elder amongst many others, I feel that I am part of a continuation of a grand artistic tradition.
My first version of The Fall of the Rebel Angels was a series of pencil and ink wash drawings of falling angels, each in small frame – the kind used for family photographs.  The idea was that the angels are like ancestral portraits, scattered down the wall of my studio.
The second more recent version has sculptures of small angels falling to create a column of convex and concave curves.

The subject of The Fall of the Rebel Angels has been popular among artists who want to visually describe the arrival of evil on earth. Mentioned in the book of Enoch dated 302 BC (originally part of the Torah), Lucifer and his band of rebel angels are expelled from heaven by the archangel Michael. In Durer’s series of ‘Apocalypse’ woodcuts published in 1498, Michael is seen throwing out Lucifer in the form of a dragon. Pieter Brueghel the elder painted his ‘Fall of the Rebel Angels’ in 1562, an extraordinary menagerie of immagined hell creatures assembled from different bits and pieces of animals and insects. It was a time of christianity trying to assert its dominance on all aspects of life. The falling angels represent the corruption of humanity when they fell to earth, the supernatural cause of evil.

The second, more recent version has sculptures of small angels falling from heaven.  Heaven is symbolised by a large trumpet, historically associated with musical angels in early christian and renaissance paintings .  The falling rebel angels create a column of interlaced convex and concave curves and are a representation of Evil descending to Earth for the first time to mingle with humanity.  The angels are earth red to represent their demonic status.
Sarah Jones has taken some wonderful photographs that show the movement of the descent – a swarming insect quality that I think greatly adds to the effect that I want to achieve – the chaos that accompanies the abandonment of truth.