Two entries, one measurement, two kinds of angel

This catalogue holds exactly two works recorded at 52 x 66 cm, and both are filed under the same painter. One is this Matthew. The other is the archangel Raphael taking leave of the Tobit family. Set side by side the pair contains the catalogue's two categories in their purest form: a named archangel with an office, a story and a departure; and a figure that is not an angel at all but an evangelist's emblem, winged by convention and unable to leave the man it belongs to.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1661 and gives Rembrandt, filed as Dutch and Baroque. It measures 52 x 66 cm, horizontal by the record's numbers. The measured colour family is brown. The recorded location is the Louvre in Paris, which holds eleven entries in this catalogue, more than any other named institution. The subject fields class the work as male portraiture and as a religious subject, with no group category.

Which of the two has a rank

Raphael does: the eighth order, the office of escort, one of three archangels the tradition names. Matthew's companion does not and cannot, because the scheme classifies beings with independent standing and an emblem has none. Sixteen titles on this site name an archangel. Eight name Matthew. The overlap between those groups is empty — not because painters kept the figures apart, but because one belongs to a hierarchy and the other belongs to a man.