Announcement, in advance

The parenthesis in this title is the whole entry. Angels announce; that is the oldest and commonest of their offices. What is unusual here is the tense: the angels announce a martyrdom that has not yet happened. The message is not news of a birth or a resurrection but a warning delivered ahead of an event, which turns the messengers into a kind of chorus of foreknowledge rather than couriers of a fact.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1897 and gives Gustave Moreau, a French painter, with the style term Symbolism. The recorded dimensions are 60 x 73.3 cm and the measured colour family is brown. The recorded location is a private collection, which means this entry describes a work that is not on public view.

Plural, unnamed, unranked

The angels here are given in the plural and left without names, and that is the tradition's standard treatment of any angelic group that is not the three archangels. It also reflects how the ranks fared in practice: Gabriel kept his lily and his single errand, while every other announcing angel merged into an undifferentiated body that painters could multiply as a composition required. Cecilia's own attributes belong to a different reading; this one follows the angels.