The Dead Christ Supported by an Angel

One angel instead of two

The supporting type — the dead Christ held upright for the viewer rather than laid down in a narrative — usually employs a pair of angels, because two figures can flank a third and hold it evenly. This entry's title records a single one. That change is not a detail of arrangement but a change of relation: a pair produces a symmetrical support, a single angel produces a companion.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1478 and gives Antonello da Messina, an Italian painter, filed under Early Renaissance. It measures 51 x 74 cm — small by the standards of the altarpieces elsewhere in this catalogue, and closer to the scale at which a devotional panel is looked at alone. The measured colour family is yellow. The recorded location is the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

An office with no rank attached

Supporting angels have no place in the nine-order hierarchy. The scheme sorts the ranks by proximity to God and assigns the contemplative orders to the top; nothing in it describes a figure whose task is to hold a body steady in front of a person praying. The type was built by painters for a use, and the tradition's ladder was simply not consulted. This catalogue records the function, since that is the part the picture actually contains.