After the fall, a single figure

The subject of the rebel host is a mass subject: a sky full of falling bodies, a battle, an expulsion. This title records something else — one fallen angel, alone. That shift is characteristic of the nineteenth century, which took a figure defined by an event and turned it into a figure defined by a state. There is no episode named here, and no other presence.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1868 and gives Alexandre Cabanel, a French painter, with the style term Academicism. The measured colour family is ochre. The recorded location is a private collection, so this entry describes a work not on public view. No dimensions are given in the record.

A rank that has been removed

The tradition's nine orders describe standing before God, and a fallen angel is by definition outside the scheme. That is what makes the type useful to painters working long after altarpieces stopped being commissioned: a figure with wings, no rank, no attribute, no errand, and nothing to do. Michael can only be painted fighting; Gabriel can only be painted announcing. A fallen angel can be painted simply existing, which is why the nineteenth century produced so many of them and so few archangels.