Angels who hold a body

The supporting angel is one of Western painting's inventions rather than one of its inheritances: a devotional image in which the dead Christ is held upright by angels so that a viewer can meet him. The function is unusual because it is addressed outward. These angels are not participants in a narrative — they are not at the tomb, not at a burial — they are supports, and their office is to present.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1470 and gives Giovanni Bellini, an Italian painter, filed under Early Renaissance. The measured colour family is orange. The recorded location is the National Gallery in London. No dimensions are given in the record, so nothing is said here about the scale of the panel.

Why two, and why unnamed

The count is structural. Two figures can flank a third and hold it symmetrically, which is what the type requires; one produces a different, more intimate arrangement, and this catalogue holds examples of both. The angels are never named, because naming would make them characters and the type needs them to be functions. In the ranked scheme they would fall at the bottom, in the order whose work is contact with human beings — which is exactly what supporting a body for a viewer amounts to.