Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness

The verb the account supplies

Ministering is the word the narrative itself uses: after the temptation in the wilderness, angels came and ministered. It is one of the few angelic functions in the tradition that arrives already named by the text rather than assigned by painters. What the text does not supply is any number, any name, or any rank — only the plural and the verb, which is precisely the state in which most angels enter this catalogue.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1843 and gives Thomas Cole, filed as American, with the style term Romanticism. The measured colour families are brown and red. No location is recorded for this entry and no dimensions are recorded, so neither is stated here. The subject fields file the work under landscape, mountain and rock as well as religion. Three entries on this site are filed as American, and this is one of them.

A hierarchy with no architecture to stand in

Rank in painting is usually built rather than stated: tiers of an altarpiece, steps of a throne, registers of a triptych. A wilderness offers none of that. There is no structure for angels to be placed above or below, so a picture set there has to make the hierarchy out of distance and elevation, or leave it out. Of the 224 works catalogued here, 54 are dated to the nineteenth century, and the tendency across that group is the same: the angel keeps its office and loses its position.