A rank taken away

Chains are the negation of an angelic office. Every order in the inherited scheme is defined by motion or by contemplation — messengers go, guardians accompany, the highest ranks attend on God without interruption. A bound angel can do none of it. The title does not say who bound the figure or why, and neither does the record, so this page supplies no story. What it can say is that the image describes a being whose whole definition is function, deprived of function.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1875 and gives Odilon Redon, a French painter, with the style term Symbolism. The measured colour family is red. The recorded location is a private collection, and no dimensions are recorded. Redon accounts for five entries in this catalogue, and four of the five concern an angel that has fallen, been bound, or been renamed — a concentration no other artist here matches.

A title that is easy to misfile

This catalogue also holds a work called Angelica in Chains. Angelica is a character from Ariosto's romance, not an angel at all, and six entries here carry her name for the same accidental reason that thirty-three carry the word evangelist and five name Castel Sant'Angelo: the letters match. A site organised by angelic rank has to say plainly which of its entries contain an angel and which contain a homonym. This one contains an angel.