The Archangel Michael defeating Satan

The rank the title names

The tradition Western painting inherited sorts the celestial host into nine orders, and "archangel" is one of the lower ones — near the bottom of the scheme, despite the prominence its members enjoy on canvas. Michael holds the militant office in that tradition: armour, a sword or lance, and the adversary underfoot are his stable attributes, and any picture that supplies them is naming him without a caption. This entry's title supplies both halves of the formula outright, the rank and the act, so no identification has to be inferred.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1635 and gives Guido Reni, an Italian painter, with Baroque as the style term. It measures 202 x 293 cm — altar scale, not cabinet scale. The measured colour family of the image is red. The recorded location is not a museum but a church, Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome, so the entry describes a picture held where devotional images were meant to hang rather than in a gallery.

An archangel is not an angel

The anonymous angel of a Nativity or a Coronation belongs to a chorus and is interchangeable with the one beside it. Michael is an individual with a name, a function and a fixed adversary. Painting keeps the distinction visible — choruses get multiplied, Michael gets isolated — and this catalogue files the two apart for the same reason.