Music Making Angels

The office is the whole title

No names, no rank, no scene, no saint, no Virgin — the title consists of an activity and a plural. Music-making is among the best-attested angelic functions in Western painting, and thirteen of the 224 titles in this catalogue involve it, but it is a function of the chorus rather than of any named individual. Michael does not play an instrument; unnamed angels do.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1628 and gives Peter Paul Rubens, a Flemish painter, with Baroque as the style term. The recorded dimensions are 65 x 83 cm. The measured colour family is ochre. No location is recorded.

Where music sits in the ranks

In the schemes the tradition inherited, the orders closest to the divine are described as praising rather than acting, while the lower orders carry messages to the world. Musical angels in painting sit at the point where that praise becomes visible to people, and the convention is stable and public enough to state without citing anyone. This painter has five entries in the catalogue. No location is recorded for this one, and the size on file is cabinet scale.