Domenica 24 giugno l’Unità Pastorale di Barga organizza la presentazione del libro “Il mondo degli angeli nelle chiese di Barga” e l’inaugurazione della mostra di foto tratte dallo stesso volume. L’appuntamento è alle 17,30 presso la chiesa della SS. Annunziata. Il programma prebvede una santa messa alle 17,30; alle 18,15 la presentazione del volume e della mostra.
Don Silvio Baldisseri ha presentato il suo libro “Il Mondo degli Angeli nelle Chiese di Barga”. Presenti Mons. Stefano Serafini, il Vice Sindaco Alberto Giovannetti e il Pres. U.C. Nicola Boggi.
Angels have appeared in works of art for millennia. Angel-shaped beings appear in ancient Mesopotamian and Greek art and were probably the inspiration for the popular Christian image of angels.
Angels remained a popular subject for Byzantine and European paintings and sculpture.
The earliest known Christian image of an angel, in the Cubicolo dell’Annunziazione in the Catacomb of Priscilla, which is dated to the middle of the third century, is without wings. Representations of angels on sarcophagi and on objects such as lamps and reliquaries of that period also show them without wings, as for example the angel in the Sacrifice of Isaac scene in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus.
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The earliest known representation of angels with wings is on what is called the Prince’s Sarcophagus, discovered at Sarigüzel, near Istanbul, in the 1930s, and attributed to the time of Theodosius I (379-395).
In this same period, Saint John Chrysostom explained the significance of angels’ wings: “They manifest a nature’s sublimity. That is why Gabriel is represented with wings. Not that angels have wings, but that you may know that they leave the heights and the most elevated dwelling to approach human nature. Accordingly, the wings attributed to these powers have no other meaning than to indicate the sublimity of their nature.”
From then on, though of course with some exceptions, Christian art represented angels with wings, as in the cycle of mosaics in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major (432-440). Multi-winged angels, often with only their face and wings showing, drawn from the higher grades of angels, especially cherubim and seraphim, are derived from Persian art, and are usually shown only in heavenly contexts, as opposed to performing tasks on earth. They often appear in the pendentives of domes or semi-domes of churches.
History of Angels in Art
The word ‘angel’ has its roots in the Indo-European word cognate with Sanskrit “Angiris’, which is ultimately from “Agni”, meaning “the light/fire of life”, the first word in the oldest text in the world, The Rig Veda. Agni can be seen depicted not with birds wings as was the later tradition, but with wings of fire.
The concept of angels goes back to the ‘Angiris’ who were a group of celestial beings, descendants of Agni, and were responsible for watching over humans.They also were not depicted with wings, but could fly, and emanated light. The middle-eastern religions were inextricably linked with the same myths and stories, and such beings can be found depicted in art from the Far East to Western Europe.
Angels, especially the Archangel Michael, who were depicted as military-style agents of God, came to be shown wearing Late Antique military uniform. This could be either the normal military dress, with a tunic to about the knees, armour breastplate and pteruges, but also often the specific dress of the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor, with a long tunic and the loros, a long gold and jewelled pallium restricted to the Imperial family and their closest guards. The basic military dress it is still worn in pictures into the Baroque period and beyond in the West (see Reni picture above), and up to the present day in Eastern Orthodox icons. Other angels came to be conventionally depicted in long robes, and in the later Middle Ages they often wear the vestments of a deacon, a cope over a dalmatic, especially Gabriel in Annunciation scenes – for example the Annunciation in Washington by Jan van Eyck. – source
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