Archangel (Study to "Treasures of angels")

A rank with no individual attached

The title is a rank and nothing else: Archangel, singular, unnamed. In the tradition an archangel is an individual by definition — the rank is only ever borne by figures with names — so a title that supplies the rank and withholds the name is doing something unusual. The record adds that this is a study toward a larger composition dated the following year and also held in this catalogue.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1904 and gives Nicholas Roerich, a Russian painter, with Art Nouveau Modern as the style term. The recorded dimensions are 45 x 55 cm. The measured colour family is yellow. The location on record is New Hermitage Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Sixteen archangels, and two studies

Sixteen of the 224 titles here contain the word archangel; only two entries in the whole catalogue are marked as studies, and this is one. The style term on file is Art Nouveau Modern, and the subject tags include Abstract Art and Bird alongside the religious ones. A twentieth-century archangel of this kind is a borrowing from a system its painter no longer worked inside, which is a fair thing to say about the title without saying anything about the canvas.