Study for "Fallen Angel"

A rank in preparation

A fallen angel is defined by subtraction. The category exists only because a rank was held and then removed, which makes it the one angelic condition that cannot be read off wings or attributes — it has to be told. This entry is a step before the telling: the record marks it a study, and the catalogue also holds the finished picture of the same title by the same painter, dated 1868, twenty-two years later.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1846 and gives Alexandre Cabanel, a French painter, with Academicism as the style term. The recorded dimensions are 25.2 x 37.4 cm. The measured colour family is ochre. No location is recorded.

Two studies in two hundred and twenty-four

Only two of the 224 titles in this catalogue announce themselves as studies, and this is one of them. That scarcity is worth stating because a study occupies a different place in a catalogue than a finished picture: it is evidence of a decision rather than the decision. Five titles here contain the words fallen angel. The record supplies no location for this one.