The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Four Angels

The word that is also a rank

"Enthroned" does double work in a catalogue of angels. In the inherited hierarchy, Thrones are an order — the third of the first triad, ranked with the seraphim and cherubim and defined by bearing rather than by errand. In a picture like this the throne is a piece of furniture, and the angels around it belong to no order the title names. The same word points at the top of the scheme and at a carved chair, and painting almost always means the chair.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1509 and gives Quentin Matsys, filed as Flemish and Northern Renaissance. The measured colour families are brown and red. The recorded location is the National Gallery in London. No dimensions are recorded for this entry. The subject fields class it as female portraiture as well as a religious subject.

Counting instead of ranking

Ten titles in this catalogue use a throne or the word enthroned, and where they add angels they add a number rather than an order. That is the consistent behaviour of the whole tradition as this record preserves it: not one of the 224 titles here names a seraph or a cherub, while sixteen name an archangel and thirty-seven name a Virgin. The scheme's summit went unpainted. Its errand-runners and its arithmetic did not.