ANGELI -- altare della cappella del Santissimo Sacramento -- Two over-life angels by BERNINI, Cappella del Sacramento, Vaticano

Speranza












Kneeling angels in attitudes of intense devotion occupied BERNINI over a great many hears. They are given their FINAL AND MOST *SUBLIME* realisation in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in Saint Peter's.

This was planned at one stage with many angels surrounding the tabernacle, like a terrestrial embodiment of the army arrayed round the throne of God -- 1 kings xxiii, 19.

The finished work with only TWO ANGELS (very symmetrical, all'italiana) is no more than a FRAGMENT of the much larger scheme.

BERNINI seems to have regarded the task as so IMPORTANT that, despite his age, he carried out the full-scale models of the angels himself.

Nobody but BERNINI is capalbe of rendering these superior beings, the angels, in teir STATE of IMMUTABLE HAPPINESS.

REMOTE from HUMAN PASSIONS, with an angelic smile on their angelic faces, they are wholly absorbed in ADORATION.

They form a deliberate CONTRAST to the severe architecture of the domed circular tabernacle in which the SACRAMENT is preserved.