Adolescent Virgin decorated by Angels in the presence of Joachim and Saint Anne

An errand of adornment

The verb is decorated. Angels crown, garland or dress the Virgin while her parents look on. Nothing in the nine orders describes adornment as an office, and no scriptural episode supplies this scene; it belongs to the devotional expansions that grew around the Virgin's early life. What makes it interesting for a catalogue of rank is the audience. Joachim and Anne are present, which means angels are performing a service for a child in front of the two people with authority over her.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives Gaspar de Crayer, filed as Flemish and Baroque. The measured colour families are red and blue. No date of creation is recorded for this entry, no location is recorded, and no dimensions are recorded, so none of the three is stated here. The subject fields class the work as a group composition and as a religious subject.

Servants above the parents

By doctrine the angels in that room outrank every human being in it. By the arrangement this title describes, they are the ones doing the work while the humans watch. The inversion runs through the whole catalogue and is its most consistent finding: the scheme's ranks measure nearness to God, not standing in a scene, and painting had no way to show the first except by arranging the second. Thirty-seven of the 224 titles here name a Virgin or a Madonna. Sixteen name an archangel. No title on this site names an order above the archangels.