The Fall of the Rebel Angels

An expulsion filed as landscape

The subject fields for this entry include landscape. That is an unexpected category for an event whose setting is the sky and whose action is a descent, and it is the kind of filing that tells you what a picture is organised around: a vertical distance with figures falling through it, rather than a confrontation between named parties. Of the four entries in this catalogue carrying this title, this is the only one the record files under landscape.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1665 and gives Luca Giordano, an Italian painter, filed under Baroque. The measured colour family is brown. No location is recorded for this entry and no dimensions are recorded, so neither is stated here. Alongside landscape the record lists religious and mythological categories, and fantasy.

Falling is not a rank

Nine entries here involve a fall or a fallen figure — rebel hosts, single fallen angels, a winged man. In every case the title describes an event or a state, never an order. This is consistent rather than careless: the inherited nine orders classify a standing hierarchy, and a falling body has left it. Sixteen titles here name an archangel, and those figures keep their offices in every entry where they appear. The fallen keep nothing, which is why they are the only angels in this catalogue that can be filed under sky.