Angel of the Last Judgment

A trumpet at the end of the ranks

The angel of the Last Judgment is defined by an act, not by an order: the sounding that begins the end. Like the destroying angels and the angel of judgment elsewhere in this catalogue, it has no place in the nine-rank scheme, because the ranks were sorted by nearness to God and the apocalyptic figures were sorted by what they do. By the twentieth century this was the only kind of angel left with any pictorial force.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1911 and gives Wassily Kandinsky, filed as Russian, with the style term Expressionism. It measures 64 x 50 cm and the measured colour family is red. The recorded location is the Lenbachhaus in Munich. The record files the entry's subject as abstraction — shapes and colours — while the title names a figure, and the catalogue keeps both statements rather than choosing between them.

A second entry, nearly identical

This catalogue holds another work of the same subject, the same year and the same recorded dimensions, in a different collection. That is a fact about the record and not an interpretation of either picture: two entries, 1911, 64 x 50 cm, with different measured colour families and different recorded locations. Where a subject repeats like that, the catalogue lists both rather than merging them.