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2 63

The Origin of the Vested Angel as a Eucharistic Symbol

in Flemish Painting

M. B. McNamee

Some years ago I published a note in The Art BulletinI in

which I made the suggestion that the vested angel is an

additional eucharistic symbol among the many which occur

in Flemish painting during the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries. In that note I suggested that in the Portinari

Altarpiece the garbing of all the angels in the vestments of

the subministers of a solemn high mass (in albs and stoles,

dalmatics, and copes, but never in the chasuble of the

celebrant) amounts to a conscious symbol of the mass in

which Christ himself is the celebrant vested in the chasuble

of his flesh. The vested angel thus becomes a symbol

analogous to the bundle of wheat, an obvious eucharistic

symbol in the same painting, and to the wheat stalks and

grapes and grape vines employed as eucharistic symbols in

many other Flemish paintings.2

Since publishing that note I have been able to check

rather exhaustively the occurrence of the vested angel in

Flemish book illuminations, sculpture, and panel paintings

throughout the whole history of Flemish art.3 In the Porti-

nari Altarpiece the vested angels are employed in a Nativity

scene, but any attentive examination of Flemish art reveals

that they were used in almost every possible kind of scene in

the life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Last Judg-

ment. Close study also shows that there is complete con-

sistency in the way the vested angels are represented by

Flemish artists: they are always dressed in the vestments of

deacons and subdeacons of the mass. In the hundreds of

examples which I studied I found only one instance of an

angel dressed in a chasuble and that is in a painting late in

the sixteenth century by a minor artist who was probably

adopting a tradition whose full significance he did not

understand.4

The broad survey of the subject which I have been able

to make in the last few years gives me greater assurance that

I was right in my previous suggestion that the vested angel

in Flemish painting, and in painting elsewhere that was

influenced by this especially Flemish convention, does

symbolize the mass. I would like to make the further

suggestion here that the fact that the vested angel occurs in

scenes from the whole life of Christ and the Virgin in these

paintings represents a special interpretation of the mass -

the idea that what Christ offered in his sacrificial giving of

himself at the Last Supper and on Calvary and still offers in

the mass is the totality of himself in time and eternity - from

the moment of his Incarnation to the Last Judgment.5 Not

merely his death on Calvary, but every episode in Christ's

life - his incarnation, his birth, his manifestation to the

Gentiles at the visit of the Magi, his baptism, his public

miracles, his resurrection and risen life, his ascension into

heaven, and his second coming in the Last Judgment - is

part of his sacrificial gift of himself, and all are, therefore,

subsumed in the sacrificial offering of the mass. In this light,

it is perfectly appropriate to find the Flemish visual artists

employing the vested angel as a eucharistic symbol in any

scene from the life of Christ. Any incident from his life was

and remains a part of his redemptive sacrifice of himself in

time and it is embraced in every offering of the eucharistic

sacrifice of the mass.

The presence of vested angels in thirteenth-, fourteenth-

and fifteenth-century Flemish art needs no demonstration;

they confront us everywhere in the Flemish painting of those

centuries. What I wish to do in this article is suggest how

they came to be there and how they may have acquired a

eucharistic significance.

Studies such as Jeanne Villette's L'Ange dans l'art d'occi-

dent6 have shown that the angel vested in ecclesiastical garb

does not become a commonplace iconographic device in

Western art until the late fourteenth century, and that, even

then, it was most extensively and consistently employed only

in Flanders and in the parts of Germany, France, northern

Italy, Spain, and Portugal which were most influenced by

Flemish art.7

The usual costume of angels in the art of the West before

the thirteenth century was derived either from the Byzantine

1 M. B. McNamee, "Further Symbolism in the Portinari Altarpiece,"

Art Bulletin, XLV, 1963, 142-43.

2 Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Mem-

ling and Joos van Cleve are only a few of the Flemish artists who used

grapes or grape vines in the background or sculptural details of their

paintings with a eucharistic significance. A bundle of wheat or wheat

stalks was used for a similar symbolic purpose by several Flemish paint-

ers - notably Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der

Goes, David Gerard and Jacob Cornelis van Oostsanen, to mention only

the most important.

3 A Research Fulbright Fellowship and a grant from the American

Philosophical Society in 1965 enabled me to spend the entire year

investigating this subject in libraries and museums both in the United

States and in Europe, and especially in the photographic indexes of

Flemish painting at the Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique in

Brussels. I am indebted to Professors H. W. Janson and Frederick Hartt

who supported my application for those grants and urged me to make

this study in the first place. I also owe much to Professor Charles Cuttler

who gave me many helpful suggestions while I was doing my research.

4 The painting is Mary with the Divine Infant and Angels by the Master of

the Aachen Altar (1480-I520). It is now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich

(No. 10756). One of the angels seems to be wearing a chasuble. It is the

only example I have discovered anywhere of an angel wearing a chasuble.

The painting is by a German, not a Flemish artist.

5 M. de la Taille, S.J., gives the best defence of this interpretation of the

mass, and he actually uses Jan van Eyck's Mystical Lamb and other

Flemish paintings as part of his proof that this was a traditionally accept-

ed concept of the sacrifice of the mass. See his Mysterium Fidei de Augustis-

simo Corporis et Sanguinis Christi Sacrificio atque Sacramen to Elucidationes,

Paris, 1931.

6J. Villette, L'Ange dans l'art d'occident du XIIfme au XVklme siecle, France,

Italie, Flandre, Allemagne, Paris, 1940, 92.

7Ibid., 9o.

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264 THE ART BULLETIN

tradition of the East or was based on an adaptation of the

Roman toga or of the tunic actually worn by men in the

Middle Ages. In Byzantine religious art, angels are fre-

quently represented in functions analogous to those of

imperial court soldiers; they are often pictured as spear-

bearers standing guard at the throne of Christ the Panto-

crator (Figs. I and 2). These spear-bearing guards of Christ

are another manifestation of the Eastern imagination which

focused on the royalty and divinity of Christ and which

built a religious cult and devised a religious art that high-

lighted the regal, the mysterious and the awe-inspiring

elements of the Christian revelation. Angels were a part of

that atmosphere; and, even when they did not function as

soldiers with spears in their hands standing guard at the

heavenly court of Christ the King, they nevertheless usually

wore either the sumptuous garb of the imperial court or the

vestments of the minor functionaries of the mass which, in

the East, were actually adaptations of the rich imperial

court costume. The regal background into which these

angels fit is well described in a panegyric of Constantine by

Eusebius which speaks of God as a Heavenly Emperor served

by the angels as royal guards: "He is above and beyond

all created things, the Highest, the Greatest, the most

Mighty One; whose throne is the arch of heaven, and the

earth the footstool of his feet. . ... His ministers are the

heavenly hosts; his armies the supernal powers, who own

allegiance to him as their Master, Lord and King."8

This Eastern manner of vesting angels became widely

known in the West through the many trade contacts be-

tween the East and West and through the Crusades. Eastern

ivories, illuminated manuscripts and enamels were brought

back by the Crusaders which familiarized the West with the

Eastern angelic image; as a result, we find angels in the

courtly oriental garb or in vestments adapted from it in

Western book illuminations, sculptures, frescoes, mosaics

(Fig. 3), and stained-glass windows from the third up to the

end of the thirteenth century especially in Italy but also

north of the Alps.

There was one very important form of liturgical composi-

tion in Byzantine art, however, which was adopted only

rarely in the West - the Eternal Mass or Divine Liturgy in

which Christ in heaven is represented as the Celebrant of an

Eternal Mass assisted by angels vested in the orarion, the

oriental stole, which is the distinguishing mark of the deacon

in the oriental rites. These angels are sometimes also repre-

sented as carrying the vessels of the mass in an offertory

procession. A good example of this Byzantine motif occurs

in the fourteenth-century fresco in the Church of the Peri-

bleptos in Mistra.9 There Christ appears at the altar vested

in the Eastern chasuble of the Celebrant assisted by angels

wearing the Eastern stole or orarion and other oriental vest-

ments and carrying the utensils of the mass. In this Byzan-

tine representation of the Eternal Liturgy we already have

angels vested as deacons participating with Christ in offering

an Eternal Mass.

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2 Angels as Royal Guards of the Trinity, The New Testament,

Vienna, Nationalbibliothek MS Sup. Gr. 52, fol. Iv (photo:

Bild-Archiv der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek)

8s Eusebius, from "Oration in Praise of Constantine," A Select Library of

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., eds. Philip

Schaff and Henry Wace, 1890, I, 582.

9 C. Diehl, Manuel d'Art Byzantin, 1925-26, figs. 400 and 401.



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THE VESTED ANGEL 265

I have been able to find only a few examples of possible

adaptations of this motif in Western art. One occurs in the

sculptures on the north transept portal of Notre Dame in

Paris (Fig. 4). On the topmost and on the second registers of

the tympanum are scenes from the legend of the priest

Theophilus who, like Faust, sold himself to the Devil and

later was redeemed by the Virgin; on the third and lowest

registers are the Nativity, the Presentation of Christ in the

Temple, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Flight into

Egypt. On the innermost arch framing the tympanum there

appears a series of angels holding the utensils of the mass.

They are vested, for the most part, in variations of the simple

tunic and mantle which became the usual angelic garb in

medieval French art; but the third pair from the bottom is

definitely wearing a simple form of the vestments of the

deacon - the amice, the alb, and the dalmatic. They carry

the paten and the pall of the mass. The series of figures

appears to be an adaptation of the oriental procession of

angels in the Divine Liturgy carrying the utensils of the

mass. But - and this is a typical Western concept - they

accompany not Christ in heaven vested as the Eternal

Priest but the human Christ born in time, offered by Simeon

above the altar in the temple, occasioning the Slaughter of

the Innocents, and fleeing into Egypt in order to escape the

sword of Herod. In other words, it is Christ beginning his

sacrifice of himself in time that is suggested here - the sacri-

fice that will be continued in the sacrifice of the mass

symbolized by the utensils of the mass carried by the angels

in the framing arch and by the deacon's vestments (dal-

matics) worn by the third pair of angels.

A second example of a possible Western adaptation of this

Eastern motif may be seen in the sculptures on the exterior

of the apse of Rheims Cathedral. Vested for the most part

again in the medieval tunic, angels there appear between

the windows of the lower story holding items associated with

the liturgy of the mass - missals and scrolls, holy water

stoups, censors and incense boats. One of them, however, is

wearing a cope and another both the dalmatic and maniple of

the deacon - the latter a vestment worn only at mass (Fig. 5).

Villette remarks that angels wearing these vestments this early

in the West are exceptions. One has to wait until the four-

teenth century, for instance, to find an example in Italy.10

The angels of Rheims, then, would seem to be associated

with the mass through their carrying the utensils of that

sacrament, through the fact that some of them are wearing

vestments of subministers of the mass, and through the

position of all of them flanking the apse which actually

canopies the altar of the real sacrifice of the mass, offered

here in time in contrast to the mass offered in eternity by

Christ in the Divine Liturgy of Byzantine iconography.

A third example of an adaptation of this Byzantine motif

is found in an unusual eleventh-century painting of the Last

Judgment (Fig. 6)11 in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. On the top

register of this painting (shaped like a keyhole and perhaps

symbolizing the key to heaven) Christ is represented as the

judge seated on the arch of the heavens holding a cross in

one hand, and in the other, a medallion on which appear

the words ecce victimus sum. He is flanked by two angels

wrapped in the feathered wings of seraphim and by two in

Roman togas. But in the second register Christ appears

again standing behind an altar on which are displayed the

instruments of his Passion. He shows the wounds in his hands

and extends his arms as does the celebrant at the mass. On

each side of the altar stand two angels vested in the Eastern

stole or orarion and holding scrolls in one hand on which are

inscribed the words of Christ's judgment of the elect and the

damned, and, in the other hand, a modification of the

Byzantine ripidion, the special instrument of the deacon in

the oriental rites.12 They, in turn, are flanked by the seated

figures of the twelve apostles. Christ is clearly represented

here as the celebrant of the Eternal Liturgy flanked by the

two angels vested as Byzantine deacons. It would appear that

the artists of the panel are suggesting that it is this inter-

cessory sacrifice of the mass that stands between the Last

Judgment of Christ above and the souls below being judged.

This motif was rather rare in the West, but there is

another favorite Byzantine eucharistic motif which is found

more often in Western art - the Communion of the Apostles.

One eleventh-century Byzantine example of this subject

may be seen in a mosaic in the apse of Hagia Sophia in

Kief.13 An altar arranged for mass appears in the center,

and Christ, in a toga-like garment, is represented at each

10 Villette, L'Ange dans l'art d'occident, 88, also points out that it is clear

that what some of the angels are wearing are copes and not secular capes

because they are fastened by the liturgical clasp or morse and not by the

band or cord of the secular cape.

11 Pinacoteca Vaticana, No. 526. The painting, on a wood panel, shaped

like a large keyhole, is composed of five registers. It has been traditionally

attributed to the painters Joannes and Nicolaus of whom not much is

known except that they painted in Rome in the second half of the I Ith

century. See Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der Christlichen Kunst, ii, Gerd

Mohn, 1968, for comment on this picture as it relates to the Passion of

Christ.

12 D. Attwater, A Catholic Dictionary, 1958, 434, has this to say of the

ripidion: (gr., fan.) "A flat metal disk representing a cherub's head sur-

rounded by six wings, sometimes furnished with tiny bells, mounted

upright on a shaft in such a manner that it can be made to revolve; used

in Byzantine, Armenian, Coptic, Maronite and Syrian rites. Its original

purpose was to keep away flies from the holy gifts during the anaphora ...

It is the characteristic instrument of the deacon and is handed to him at

ordination." The angels in this painting, vested in the Byzantine deacon's

orarion are holding only the disk without the wooden staff.

13 See C. Diehl, Manuel d'art byzantin, Paris, 1925-26, 809-0o, for a des-

cription of the Divine Liturgy as it appears in Hagia Sophia in Kief. He

remarks of it: "Au centre de la composition, le Christ, un grandpretre,

est debout sous un dais; devant lui defile la procession des anges portant

les objets necessaires au sacrifice eucharistique; sur le fond d'un bleu

intense ils passent d'une allure lkgere et rapide, largement drapes de

dalmatiques blanches dont les plis dessisent leur hanches pleines, un

ruban blanc traversant leurs cheveux roux, leurs ailes vertes 'a revers

bleus largement eploudes, les uns, coiff6s de la mitre, tenant en main des

cierges ou des encensoirs, les autres soutenant sur leur mains les espices."

L. R6au, Iconographie de l'art Chritien Iconographie de la Bible, ii, Paris, 1957,

40, says of Christ the High Priest in Oriental iconography: "I1 se rattache

a deux sujets particuliers 'I l'art byzantin: la Communion des Apdtres oui le

Christ distribue lui-meme aux disciples le pain et le vin et la Divine

Liturgie ou1 ii celebre en personne, avec l'assistance des anges vetus en

diacres, le saint sacrifice." And he further observes: "Ce type sacerdotal

ou eucharistique est l'illustration d'un passage des Psaumes: 'I1 a etd fait

grand-pretre pour l'Lternitd selon l'ordre de Melchisedec.' " M. A.

Lavin, in "The Altar of Corpus Domini in Urbino: Paolo Uccello, Joos

van Ghent, Piero della Francesca," Art Bulletin, XLIX, 1967, 1-24, dis-

cusses the influence of the Byzantine motif of the Divine Liturgy and the

Communion of the Apostles on the Communion of the Apostles byJoos van

Ghent at Urbino, but she points out that it has been combined with

details from the Western liturgy. In it, two angels, vested in amice and alb

hover at each side of the composition in the apse-like setting of the scene.



5/17


end of the altar with a ciborium in his hands moving

towards lines of the apostles to whom he is about to give

Communion. Christ is assisted by angels at each side of the

altar who carry the ripidion of the Eastern liturgy and who

wear the oriental orarion. Another example of the same

motif occurs in a fresco in the fourteenth-century Peri-

bleptos church in Mistra, and still another in the fourteenth-

century church of Megoricino in Serbia.14

I have indicated above that, in contrast to the liturgical

garb of angels in some of these Byzantine motifs, the gar-

ments worn by most of the angels in the sculptures of the

north transept portal of Notre Dame in Paris are adapta-

tions of the simple medieval tunic. It was this garment that

came to be the most usual garb of angels in French art of the

thirteenth century, a simplification of the tunic actually

worn by men at the time. Often combined with the tunic

was a very simple flowing mantle. It is this combination of

tunic and mantle that the first pair of angels on the Notre

Dame north portal are wearing. The Byzantine court dress

or an adaptation of the Roman toga is the predominant

angelic dress in the early Middle Ages up to the thirteenth

century in France as elsewhere in the West, but the simple

tunic or the tunic and mantle become the more usual garb

in thirteenth-century France and generally also in England.

In Italy what developed into the Byzantine garb for

angels is also in evidence in all media of artistic expression

from the third to the thirteenth century; but from the

thirteenth century on the Italians tended to favor an adapt-

ed Roman toga as an angelic dress. In the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, we find some Italian artists borrowing

the simple tunic or tunic and mantle from the French. But

some artists north of the Alps also normally dressed their

angels in the Roman toga, as, for example, Nicolas of

Verdun, in his Klosterneuburg enamels of 1 181, and, even

earlier, Renier de Huy, in his Baptismal Font of ca. I II o in

Saint Barthelemy, Liege.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, among

the variations of the Byzantine court dress, the Roman toga,

and medieval tunic, we find some few angels appearing in

strictly liturgical garb - the alb and stole. They appear first

in illuminated manuscripts, especially in miniatures repre-

senting the angel in scenes of the Visit of the Marys to the

tomb of Christ. Ordinarily, in miniatures of this scene in

early illuminated psalters, Bibles and books of hours, the

angel is garbed in the familiar toga or tunic. However, in

some quite early manuscripts we detect a differentiation

between the garb that the angel wears at the tomb of Christ

in scenes of the Visit of the three Marys from what is worn

by angels in other scenes in the same manuscript. In minia-

tures of the Annunciation, for instance, the angel may

appear in a colored toga, while in the miniature of the Visit

of the Marys he wears either a pure white toga or a simple

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white tunic. A good example of this variation occurs in the

thirteenth-century Psalter of Ingeburge of Denmark

(Chantilly, Mus6e Cond6, Ms 27062). The angel of the

Annunciation (Fig. 7) wears the traditional colored toga;

while the angel seated on the tomb in the Visit of the Marys

(Fig. 8) is garbed in a pure white toga and holds a baton,

symbol of his authority as a messenger of God. In a thir-

teenth-century psalter and book of hours of French origin

14 For an illustration of this mosaic in San-Sophia, Kief, see plate xxIv

in C. Diehl's La peinture byzantine, Paris, 1933; for the fresco of the same

in the Peribleptos church in Mistra, plate XLIV; and for that in the

Megoricino church in Serbia, plate LIII. A very good modern example of

the Eternal Liturgy in a proper liturgical setting may be seen in the West

in the oriental church of Chevetogne, Belgium, which was built in this

century precisely to educate Western Christians in the Eastern liturgy

and iconographic traditions.



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7/17


in the Bibliotheque Nationale, we find a similar differentia-

tion of costume. In the Annunciation the angel wears a

tunic and colored mantle, while in the Visit of the Marys

(Fig. 9) he wears only a simple white tunic. This differentia-

tion, of course, might only illustrate the text of St. Mark

(26: 5) where we are told that the Marys arrived at the

tomb and found "on the right, a young man seated wearing

a white robe." But in a thirteenth-century psalter from

Burgundy in the British Museum (Add. Ms 16975), where

the angel of the Annunciation again appears in a colored

toga, the angel in the Visit of the Marys is dressed in a white

alb and white cope (distinguished by the morse) (Fig. io),

and holds a palm in his hand. And in the Peterborough

Psalter in the Biblioth&que Royale in Brussels (Ms 9661-62),

also dating to the thirteenth century, we find a similar

differentiation of costume that would appear to be more

than a mere variation in the color of the traditional angelic

garb. In this manuscript, too, the angels throughout wear

medieval tunics and mantles (see, for instance, fol. 73v

where the angel with Jacob is dressed in a toga-like garment

or tunic and mantle), but the angel seated on the tomb in the

Visit of the Marys and holding a palm in his hand is vested

not in a simple white tunic but clearly in a liturgical alb

with a cowl-like amice showing at the neck-line (Fig. I i).

There are, of course, other examples of this last kind of

differentiation between the vestments worn generally by the

angels in early miniatures and those worn by the angel in

the Visit of the Marys: one other occurs in the Paris Brevi-

ary, from the second half of the thirteenth century, Biblio-

theque Nationale, Ms lat. 13233, in which the angel of the

Annunciation miniature wears the toga (fol. 352v) while that

in the Visit of the Marys wears a white alb and holds a palm

in his hand. The following examples represent a solidifica-

tion of this tradition. The angel in the Visit of the Marys in

the Bourgueil Breviary, from the second half of the four-

teenth century, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Ms lat. 1043,

fol. I99v, is also clearly vested in amice and alb. By the

middle of the fourteenth century and throughout the fif-

teenth century, the usual garb of the angel in the Visit of the

Marys and other scenes as well is the liturgical alb, amice,

and cope or dalmatic. Just to cite one or two of the dozens of

possible examples from this later period, let me call atten-

tion to the Visit of the Marys miniature in the Salisbury

Breviary or the Breviary of the Duke of Bedford (I424-

1435) (Bibliothbque Nationale, Paris, Ms lat. I7294, fol.

228v), in which the angel wears an amice and alb. In the

Livre des Trbs Belles Heures du Duc de Berry (some of the

illuminations of which were done by Jan van Eyck), now

preserved in the Museo Civico at Turin, the angel of the

miniature which represents both the Resurrection of Christ

and the Visit of the Marys (fol. 77v) (Fig. 12) is likewise in

amice and alb. And in the early panel painting of the Visit

of the Marys in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum in

Rotterdam, which is certainly Eyckian in style, the angel

wears an amice, an alb, a stole, and a maniple on his left

arm - the last, a vestment worn only at the mass (Fig. 13).

We might well ask what accounts for the sudden appear-

ance of the angel in a liturgical garb at the scene of the three

Marys at the tomb. A possible answer may be found in the

influence of the Latin medieval liturgical drama in which

the directives prescribe that the angel at the tomb be so

vested. In some of the plays he is also directed to hold a

palm, symbol of Christ's victory over death, as we have seen

him doing in the Burgundian Psalter (Fig. Io) and in the

Peterborough Psalter (Fig. I I). Karl Young in The Drama

of the Medieval Church15 and Gustave Cohen in his Livre de

conduite du Rdgisseur16 have conveniently assembled the texts

of most of the extant liturgical Latin plays, many of which

contain explicit directives concerning the costuming of the

clerics who were to enact the parts. As these historical

studies of the development of medieval, ecclesiastical Latin

drama show, it was the dramatization of the Easter trope17

concerned with the Visit of the Marys to the tomb that was

the starting point of the whole evolution of medieval church

drama. The simple dialogue between the angel and the

three Marys was gradually expanded and combined with

other episodes until something like a full-fledged drama in

Latin had evolved. And then an evolution similar to the one

that developed around the Easter trope or the Visit of the

three Marys to the tomb also developed in connection with

the Visit of the Magi, the Nativity, and the Annunciation.18

This gradual development of a dramatic form extended

over a period of five centuries, and the Latin ecclesiastical

plays that were the result had an international popularity.

They varied only slightly from country to country, and were

enacted regularly, at their proper liturgical seasons, in con-

junction with the mass or the Divine Office, from the tenth

until as late as the sixteenth century. We are referring here,

of course, not to the miracle and mystery plays in the ver-

naculars which were eventually performed outside the

church and by lay actors, but to the Latin liturgical drama

which continued to be performed in the church itself by

clerics and in more or less close association with the liturgical

functions of the mass and the Divine Office.

Since these plays were enacted in the church in con-

junction with the liturgy and by clerics, it was natural that

the costumes employed would be those conveniently at

hand - the liturgical vestments. And these are the costumes

15 K. Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols., Oxford Clarendon

Press, 1932.

16 G. Cohen, Livre de conduite du Rigisseur et le compte des dipenses pour le

Mystire de la Passionjoud e' Mons en 1501, Paris, 1925.

17 See Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, I, 178-97, for a definition

and discussion of the development of tropes in general, and 201-33, for

the development of the Easter trope in particular. On page I78, he gives

the following definition of a trope: "In its broadest sense a trope may be

defined as a verbal amplification of a passage in the authorized liturgy,

in the form of an introduction, an interpolation, or a conclusion, or in

the form of any combination of these." The trope most important to this

study of course is that commonly attached to the introit of the mass of

Easter, which consisted originally of the brief dialogue of the Angel and

the three Marys at the tomb beginning with the words Quemn quaeritis in

sepulcro, Christicole? With the expansion of this dialogue began the whole

development of medineval church drama, and in its more expanded

dramatic forms we find the directives for dressing the angel or angels in

the liturgical vestments which came to be their habitual attire in

Flemish pictorial practice. Although this Easter trope was originally

attached to the Introit of the mass itself, it was later detached from it and

sung at the end of matins which immediately preceded the mass.

18 See Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, I, 451-92; In, 3-172; I99-

225, for a thorough discussion of the evolution of these other types of

plays on the analogy of the Easter play.



8/17

THE. VESTED ANGEL 269

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8 Three Marys at the Tomb, Psalter of Ingeburge of Denmark,

Chantilly, Mus6e Cond6 MS 27062, fol. 28v (photo: Giraudon)

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9/17


.............. ... .....

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12 The Resurrection and the Angel and Three Marys at the Tomb,

Livre des Tres Belles Heures du Duc de Berry, Turin, Museo

Civico, fol. 77v (photo: Museum)

that we find mentioned in the extant directives of these

plays. In the Easter play, the three Marys were themselves

frequently vested in copes or dalmatics. But what is of

particular interest to us here are the directives for vesting

the angels. One of the most specific set of directives is that in

the Regularis concordia19 of Winchester which was written in

the tenth century by St. Ethelwold as a guide to Benedictine

practice all over England, but the author remarks that it

follows the usages of Fleury and of Ghent. Since the sacra-

mentaries of Fleury and Ghent on which the Regularis

concordia is based have been lost, the Concordia itself may serve

as a guide to what was probably the current practice in

Flemish Ghent itself. It directs that, while the third lesson

of Matins is being read, four brethren are to vest themselves.

One, in an alb and with a palm in his hands, is to quietly

seat himself at the tomb; and, while the response is being

sung, the other three, vested in copes and carrying censors,

are to approach the sepulcher. The angel, seeing them

approach, is to ask them whom they are seeking: Quem

quaeritis? And the little drama proceeds from there.20 The

young man in an alb with a palm in his hand seated quietly

on the tomb describes perfectly the angel in the illumination

of the three Marys in the thirteenth-century Peterborough

Psalter (Fig. I I). Other directives of a comparable and later

date prescribe that the angel be vested in a white alb and

stole, a white alb and dalmatic, or a white alb and cope,

with or without the additional property of wings. And we

find many miniatures from the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries, such as those described above (see Figs. 10, I I,

and 12), that so represent the angel.

I am not suggesting that these vestments necessarily had

a symbolical significance in the liturgical plays in which they

occurred. But they do show that the medieval public was

perfectly familiar with the spectacle of angels in religious

scenes garbed in vestments of the subministers of the mass.

They had seen them for centuries so represented in their

liturgical dramas performed every year in their churches.

Karl Young points out that many churches retained the

simple forms of the Easter Latin plays even after more

complex Latin forms had evolved21 and that, in one form or

another, they continued to be performed in the churches

even after the vernacular plays had developed and were

being enacted outside the churches. As a matter of fact, they

actually continued to be staged as late as the early sixteenth

century.

Although the vested angels may not have carried any

intended symbolical meaning in these plays, it is worth

noting here that, from the beginning, there was a close

association between them and the mass. The earliest plays

were actually performed in the context of the mass itself as a

dramatization of the Quem quaeritis trope in the Introit22 and

with the altar functioning as the tomb. Later they were

19 See E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, Oxford University Press,

1963, II, 3o6-Io, Appendix o, for a reprint of the pertinent part of the

Regularis Concordia of St. Ethelwold. It was probably written in the Ioth

century in connection with one of the councils of Winchester. It is stated

in the Prooemium of the Concordia itself that it was based on the customs of

Fleury and Ghent. St. Dunstan, who is supposed to have done some work

on the revision of the Re'gularis Concordia, had found refuge in Saint Peter's

of Ghent during his banishment from England, so the Concordia brings us

very close to the liturgical customs and dramatic practice of Flemish

Ghent itself.

20 This following text is that of the British Museum Ms Cotton Faustino B,

IIi, fol. I88v-89v: "Dum tertia recitatur lectio, quatuor fratres induant

se, quorum unus alba indutus acsi ad aliud agendum ingrediatur, atque

latenter Sepulchri locum adeat, ibique manu tenens palmam, quietus

sedeat. Dumque tertium percelabratur responsorium, residui tres

succedant, omnes quidem cappis induti, turribula cum incensu manibus

gestantes, ac pedetemptim ad similitudinem querentium quid, ueniant

ante locum Sepulchri. Aguntur enim haec ad imitationen Angeli

sedentis in monumento, atque Mulierum cum aromatibus uenientium,

ut ungerent corpus Jhesu. Cum ergo ille residens tres uelut erraneos, ac

aliquid querentes, uiderit sibi adproximare, incipiat mediocre uoce

dulcisone cantare: Quem queritis?"

21 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, I, 272, emphasizes the

perdurance of these plays up into the I6th century: "From the dates of

the manuscripts we must infer that the plays of the simple sort now under

review were in use for more than five hundred years. Although during the

later Middle Ages arose far more ambitious forms of the Visitatio Sepulchri,

many churches adopted or retained the elementary type. The earliest of

these plays can be assigned to the second half of the tenth century, and

texts of them are still found in manuscripts of the fifteenth century and in

numerous printed books of the sixteenth."

22 Ibid., I, Chap. 7, discusses this early series of dramatic tropes still

associated with the Introit of the mass and employing the altar itself as

the tomb of Christ.



10/17


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13 Hubert van Eyck(?) or Adam

Dumont(?), Three Marys at the Tomb.

Rotterdam, Boymans-van Beuningen

Museum (photo: Museum)

transferred to the end of Matins which immediately pre-

ceded the mass. And in the earliest versions of the plays the

altar itself served as the tomb of Christ,23 an association that

we find occurring later with deliberate symbolical intention

in several Flemish paintings.

In some of the more developed Quem quaeritis Easter plays,

which included the Noli me tangere scene with Mary Mag-

dalene, Christ himself appeared in a chasuble, while the

angel, or in some instances, two angels (to dramatize St.

John's statement that there were two angels in the tomb)24

were vested in dalmatics. These later plays ended with the

singing of the Te Deum, during which Christ in chasuble and

the angels in dalmatics slowly left the choir as the celebrant

of the mass in chasuble accompanied by the deacon and

subdeacon in dalmatics approached the altar to begin

mass.25 In this situation the public would have witnessed a

visual parallel between Christ and the celebrant, both in

chasubles, and the angels and deacon and subdeacons, all in

dalmatics.26 Hence, at the end of the thirteenth century,

when angels vested as deacons or subdeacons began to appear

in the visual arts simultaneously in Italy, at the Burgundian

court, in England, and in Flanders, they came already

23 This convention in the medieval Latin plays of identifying the

sepulcher of Christ with the altar had a very ancient tradition behind it.

For instance, Germanus I, Patriarch of Constantanople (733), says in his

Theoria: "Altare est Propitiatorium in quo offerebatur pro peccato, iuxta

sanctum monumentum Christi, in quo altari victimam se Christus

obtulit Deo et Patri, per oblationem Corporis sui ... Altare est et dicitur

praesepe, et sepulchrum Domini," Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum,

xmi, Lyons, 51. And later Durandus, Bishop of Mende (1296), remarks:

"Nec est omittendum, quod in quibusdam icclesijs in his septem diebus

duo cum albis super pellicijs incipiunt responsorium Hec dies; et in alijs,

quosdam tropos post altare, - quod representat sepulchrum pro eo quod

corpus Jesu in eo sacramentaliter collocatur et consecratur - gerentes

typus duorum angelorum qui stantes in sepulcro Christum resurrexisse

retulerunt." The long tradition in the Easter plays of the identification of

the altar with the tomb of Christ makes more understandable the reverse

association of the tomb of Christ with the altar of the mass which we see

in many Flemish paintings. A similar association of the crib of the

Nativity and the altar is also pertinent to the symbolism of the mass in

many Flemish paintings. Note that Germanus I, above, identifies the

altar with both the sepulchrum and the praesepe.

24 St. John II: I I-12: "But Mary stood without before the tomb,

weeping. And she bent down, still weeping, and looked into the tomb, and

she saw two angels clothed in white sitting there, one at the head, and

the other at the feet, where the body ofJesus had lain."

25 See Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, I, 369-40o, for a discus-

sion of this late stage of the Easter plays in which Christ himself func-

tioned in chasuble.

26 How effective this juxtaposition of the dramatis personae of the Visitatio

Sepulchri and the ministers of the mass all similarly dressed in liturgical

vestments can be was impressed upon the writer in 1963 when he had the

opportunity of seeing a presentation of the Visitatio Sepulchri that included

the figure of Christ in chasuble in Saint Paul's Cathedral, London,

immediately before the Communion service or mass. The performance

was directed by E. Martin Browne who was responsible for the revival

of the York Cycle of Mystery plays at York.



11/17


114

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12/17


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fol. 44or



13/17


carrying various associations with the mass. And, indeed,

they actually were transferred into the visual arts after

enjoying a long career in medieval, Latin, liturgical

drama.27 It is highly probable, then, that when the Flemish

artists employed a whole catalogue of other symbols in their

paintings to call attention to the sacrifice of the mass, they

found that the angel of the Latin liturgical plays attired in

the vestments of the subministers of the mass was another

helpful symbol for their purposes.

Whether for symbolical purposes or not, we find the

angel so garbed appearing almost simultaneously in reli-

gious art of the late fourteenth century in Italy and north of

the Alps. And in both areas he was probably borrowed from

the Latin liturgical drama which was widespread on both

sides of the Alps - as the numerous extant versions of the

plays from both regions show.28

Good examples of the vested angel in early fourteenth-

century Italian art are the Annunciation dated about 1300, in

Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome, in which the Archangel

Gabriel is garbed in an alb and a stole crossed on his breast

which flutter in the ribbon-like manner typical of the Italian

artists, and the Annunciation of Ambrogio Lorenzetti now in

the Pinacoteca, Siena (Fig. 14), in which the angel wears an

alb and a stole in the manner of the deacon. See also the

four angels in the foreground of the Coronation of the Virgin by

Orcagna in the National Gallery, London, who wear albs,

cut-down dalmatics, and stoles outside the dalmatics

(Fig. 15). But in Italy it is doubtful that the vestments long

continued to carry any symbolic meaning, if they ever had

one. Carried over from the liturgical drama, they were

almost immediately exploited for decorative purposes and

were modified to enhance the pictorial design of the com-

positions in which they occur. Some of these early Italian

angels wear albs without arnices (a rather usual liturgical

practice in Italy); but these are soon replaced by a double

cinctured garment fitting the feminine form of the Italian

angels and owing something to the classical Greek chiton.

A good example of this type of angelic dress may be seen in

the angels of the Madonna qf the Girdle by the Sienese master

Matteo di Giovanni in the National Gallery, London

(Fig. 16). It is also the type of angelic vestment usually

employed by Botticelli. Stoles worn outside the dalmatic

22 Claus Sluter, Well of Moses (detail). Dijon, Chartreuse de

Champmol

(also an actual liturgical practice in some places in the

Middle Ages; see Fig. 15) became a favorite Italian motif in

angelic dress; but these stoles, too, were soon narrowed into

mere decorative ribbons embroidered with crosses. They

often float in most unliturgical fashion, creating mere

decorative arabesques. The angels in the top register of

Orcagna's Last Judgment in Santa Maria Novella, Florence,

well exemplify this treatment (see Fig. i7).

It is in France that the angels first assume a more strictly

correct liturgical dress and there especially in Annunciation

27 E. MAle has sometimes been said to exaggerate the importance of the

mystery plays as sources of motifs in early medieval miniatures, sculpture

and painting, but he is unquestionably correct in seeing some influence

on the visual arts from that quarter. He has the following to say about the

medieval church drama as a possible source of the vested angel in the

medieval visual arts (L'art religieux de la fin du Moyen-dge en France, Paris,

1922): "Quand on 6tudie les miniatures du XIVe siecle, on est tout

etonn6 de voir, vers 1380, le costume des anges se modifier soudain. Ils

ne portent plus la longue robe blanche du XIIIe siecle, cette belle

tunique decente qui n'est d'aucun pays, d'aucun temps, mais qui semble

le vetement meme de la vie 6ternelle. Ils disparaissent maintenant sous de

lourdes chapes aux couleurs 6clatantes, que ferme une agrafe d'orf6v-

rerie; un mince cercle d'or serre parfois leurs cheveux blonds. On dirait

de jeunes acolytes servant une messe sans fin. Qui ne connait les anges

musiciens de van Eyck, ces clercs adolescents qui donnent un concert

dans le ciel? Tels apparaissent d.jai les anges, cinquante ans avant le

retable de Gand, dans les manuscrits du duc de Berry. C'est que tels ils

apparaissent dans les Mysteres des le XIVe siecle." See the entire chap-

ter, "L'art et le thditre religieux," 35-84. MAle is speaking here mostly

of the theater as it developed outside the church at the end of the Middle

Ages. The more important influence, and the one most relevant to the

tradition of the vested angel, however, is that of the Latin liturgical plays

that continued to be acted well into the I6th century by clerics inside the

church in connection with the liturgical functions. Maile first proposed

his idea of the influence of the medieval mystery plays on the visual arts

of the Middle Ages in an article, "Le Renouvellement de l'Art par les

Mysteres," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 3rd ser., xxxI, 1904, 89- o6, 215-30;

he enlarged upon it in the work referred to above. The idea was further

developed by G. Cohen, "The Influence of the Mysteries on Art,"

Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th ser., xxIv, 1943, 327-42. The whole position of

Miale and Cohen in this matter and the criticisms it has evoked from

some scholars are summarized by L. Reau, Iconographie de L'Art Chritien,

I. Introduction Geinrale, 261-65. See Rdau, Iconographie, I, 265-66, for a

helpful bibliography on the medieval theater in general and its influence

on the visual arts in particular.

28 The plays which Karl Young mentions or publishes in The Drama of

the Medieval Church number over four hundred. All those that explicitly

prescribe the garb of the angels prescribe liturgical vestments of sub-

ministers of the mass; albs and stoles, dalmatics, or copes, but never a

chasuble, the vestment of the celebrant.



14/17


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23-26 Claus Sluter, Well of Moses (details). Dijon, Chartreuse de Champmol



15/17


scenes. David M. Robb, in his study of the iconography of

the Annunciation,29 has pointed out that the French setting

for this scene was often the interior of an oratory or chapel

rather than the outdoor portico favored by the Italians. It

may have been this ecclesiastical setting for the Annuncia-

tion that suggested to French artists the more exactly correct

liturgical vestments for the angel, but the long established

usage of the liturgical drama no doubt also influenced them.

The extant texts of the Latin plays, performed in conjunc-

tion with the liturgy of the Feast of the Annunciation30 in

the churches suggest that small aediculae be constructed in

the choir in which two vested choir boys would place them-

selves behind curtains before the mass. As the proper

functionary of the mass (the celebrant himself in an ordinary

high mass and the deacon in a solemn high mass) begins the

chanting of the Gospel describing the scene of the Annuncia-

tion, the curtains are to be drawn to reveal the two boys

impersonating the Virgin and the angel in their chapel-like

aediculae. The directives indicate that the two boys are to

speak the parts in the Gospel of the Virgin and the angel, as

the priest at the altar or the deacon at the lectern continues

to chant the narrative part of the Gospel. This liturgical

play probably had some influence on the very noticeable

tendency, in works associated with the Court of Burgundy

and French centers in general, to represent the angel of the

Annunciation in liturgical vestments in the interior of a

little Romanesque or Gothic chapel. A combination of the

French and Italian influences is evident in such instances as

the Annunciation miniature in the Book of Hours of the Duc

de Berry in the Bibliotheque Royale in Brussels, Ms I Io60-

6 (Fig. 18) where the setting is a small Gothic oratory in

which the Virgin kneels in prayer. The curtain has been

drawn back; and the angel, hovering in the air at the left,

wears an alb (no discernible amice), a dalmatic, and stole

worn outside the dalmatic. But the ribbon-like stole flutters

in the air in true Italian style. A similar example is the

Annunciation in the Book of Hours of Philip the Good in the

Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Ms. lat. 10538, fol. 3 Iv. The

setting is again a small oratory, and the angel flies in from

the right vested merely in an alb and a narrow stole crossed

on his breast which floats off in long ribbons to the rear.

Very similar, both in setting and in the vestments of the

angel (alb, dalmatic, and narrow, ribbon-like, floating

stole) is the Annunciation miniature in the Livre des Tres

Belles Heures de Notre Dame du Duc de Berry in the Museo

Civico at Turin (Fig. 19).

But in other early fifteenth-century miniatures of the

Annunciation executed in France, all similarly situated in a

Romanesque or Gothic oratory setting, we find the angel

more correctly and carefully dressed in the vestments of the

subministers of the mass. In the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de

Berry in the Musde Cond6 at Chantilly by Pol de Limbourg,

MS 65 (Fig. 2o), the angel is wearing an amice, an alb and a

dalmatic with complete liturgical decorum; in that of the

Book of Hours of the Marechal de Boucicaut in the Musde

Jacquemart-Andrd, in Paris, he is also wearing an alb, an

amice, and a dalmatic. In the Salisbury Breviary or the

Breviary of the Duke of Bedford (Fig. 2 I) in the Bibliotheque

Nationale in Paris, Ms lat. 17294, he wears an alb, an amice

and a cope. This miniature has the added interest of show-

ing God the Father above seated on a throne and holding a

crystal globe surmounted by a cross. He is commissioning

the kneeling angel Gabriel, vested in amice, alb and cope, to

bring the message of the Incarnation to the Virgin Mary.

Other angels in amices and albs, playing musical instru-

ments or singing from hymnals, surround the throne of God

the Father; and one of them has followed the angel Gabriel

to Mary's oratory and is observing the scene of the Annun-

ciation from behind the curtain which he has partly drawn

back. The cross on the crystal globe in the lap of God the

Father is, of course, an allusion to the Sacrifice of the Cross

by which the Son being sent now at the Annunciation into

time will redeem the world symbolized by the crystal globe;

and the angel, in turn, vested in the amice, alb, and cope of

subministers of the mass, probably already alludes to the

mass which is to perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross in

time.31

Although the influence of the medieval liturgical drama

on late medieval sculpture and painting may have been

over-emphasized by writers like lmile Mile32 and Leo van

29 D. M. Robb, "The Iconography of the Annunciation in the Four-

teenth and Fifteenth Centuries," Art Bulletin, xviii, 1936, 495f.

30 Young publishes the texts of several such Annunciation plays (see The

Drama of the Medieval Church, H, 245-50). The dramatic performance came

to be known as the Missa Aurea and it was established at Tournai as early

as 123 1. D. C. Shorr, "The Role of the Virgin in Giotto's Last Judgment,"

Art Bulletin, xxxvIIi, 1956, 207-14, calls attention to the Annunciation

drama that was traditionally performed in Padua at the church of the

Annunciation, a structure which preceded the Scrovegni chapel on the

site of the ancient Roman arena. She suggests that this traditional

dramatization of the Annunciation "is undoubtedly reflected in the

prominence given by Giotto to the scene of the Annunciation on the

apsidal arch of the [Scrovegni] chapel." We might also add that the

figures of both the angel Gabriel and the Virgin in their separate little

curtained aediculae probably owe something to that same dramatic

tradition.

31 The practice of I4th-century Flemish panel painters regarding the

vested angel in Annunciation scenes is in complete agreement with that

of the earlier book illuminators. They never use the chasuble, the vest-

ment of the celebrant of the mass, but always some variation of the vest-

ments of subministers of the mass, e.g., amice, alb and stole as in Robert

Campin's M6rode Altarpiece; amice, alb and cope as in Jan van Eyck's

Washington Annunciation and the Adoration of the Lamb, and in Roger van

der Weyden's Louvre Annunciation and the Annunciation panel of the

Adoration of the Magi Triptych in Munich; or in amice, alb and dal-

matic as in the Annunciation in the Metropolitan Museum (gift ofJ. Pier-

pont Morgan). In Nativity scenes such as the Nativity (Dijon) by Robert

Campin and the Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, in which

whole choirs of vested angels appear, every possible variation of the vest-

ments of subministers of the mass is employed but again never the chas-

uble. In these scenes the Christchild as celebrant of the perennial mass

is represented nude, wearing the chasuble of his flesh and making a

sacrificial offering of himself in an offertory gesture.

32 See E. Male: L'Art religieux du XIIe siecle en France. Jtude sur les origines

de l'iconographie du Moyen-dge, Paris, 1922. Male greatly emphasizes the

influence of the medieval mystery play on early medieval sculpture.

book illumination, and painting. See, for instance, his statement quoted

in note 3o. See also his L'art religieux de lafin du moyen-dge en France. Jtude

sur l'iconographie du moyen-dge et sur ses sources d'inspiration, Paris, 1949,

passim.



16/17


44

d?

27 Anonymous Netherlandish painter,

Well of Life, I6th century. Prague,

Narodni Gallery (photo: Gallery)

Puyvelde,33 it seems quite clear that both book illuminators

and panel painters of the late Middle Ages did draw con-

siderably upon that source for some of their inspiration. The

closeness with which the details of some illuminations and

paintings of vested angels approach the details prescribed

by the directives in the extant Latin liturgical plays is

another bit of evidence of that influence and provides a

helpful background for understanding some of the symbolic

intentions of the Flemish painters in their use of that

iconographic detail.

Panofsky has called attention to the effect of late medieval

sculpture on the style of early fifteenth-century Flemish

painters. He has emphasized the necessity of studying such

works as the sculptures of Claus Sluter in order to under-

stand the sculpturesque quality of the figures in some of the

paintings of Robert Campin, van Eyck and van der

33 See L. van Puyvelde, Schilderkunst en tooneelvertooningen op het Ende van de

Middeleeuwen, Ghent, 1912, 241. Van Puyvelde agrees with Mile con-

cerning the important influence of the medieval liturgical drama on the

early medieval visual arts, but he points out that Mile exaggerated the

French contribution in that influence. He convincingly shows that the

same kind of influence was making itself felt in Flanders simultaneously

with the French influence and frequently independent of it. He specific-

ally points out (pages 239-41) that the Flemish custom of vesting angels

in copes and dalmatics probably owed something to the habit of so vest-

ing them in the medieval liturgical drama.



17/17


Weyden. If the world of sculpture provides the source of

some of the stylistic features of early Flemish painters, it is

also there that some of their favorite iconographic motifs are

anticipated, and nowhere more significantly than in the

work of Claus Sluter.

In Sluter's famous Well of Moses at the Chartreuse du

Champmol in Dijon34 (Figs. 22-26), we find an interesting

use of vested angels which anticipates their appearance in

the panel paintings of Robert Campin and the van Eycks.

What remains of the W/4ell is a hexagonal structure on the

sides of which appear the beautifully sculptured figures of

the prophets Moses, David, Jeremiah, Habbakuk, Isaiah

and Daniel. On slender Gothic pillars between the prophets

stand the figures of angels with spread wings functioning

somewhat as caryatid figures sustaining the hexagonal plat-

form above. This platform once supported a Crucifixion

group: hence the Well originally was a symbolic representa-

tion of the Well of Life filled with the saving blood of Christ

shed in his Sacrifice on the Cross, and channeled to the

faithful through the sacrifice of the mass. The last concept

would seem to be symbolized here by the presence of the

angels supporting the platform of the Crucifixion group; all

but two of which are garbed in the vestments of the sub-

ministers of the mass. Beginning from the left of the figure of

Moses and reading counter-clockwise, they are wearing a

striped tunic without cincture; an amice, alb, stole, maniple

(worn only at mass), and cope (Fig. 23); an amice, alb and

cincture (Fig. 26); the feathered wings in which the

seraphim were frequently represented at the end of the

Middle Ages, and a non-liturgical cape; an amice, alb,

maniple and dalmatic (Fig. 25); and an alb and cope

(Fig. 24). The four angels garbed in exactly correct vest-

ments of the subministers of the mass may very well be

employed here as symbols of the mass which is the means of

channeling to mankind the grace of redemption represented

in the complete composition by the Crucifixion group and

by the Well itself. This is an especially persuasive notion

because, as I have pointed out above, two of the angels are

wearing the maniple, a vestment worn only during the mass

(Figs. 23 and 25). If this is part of what the sculptor had in

mind, he already suggests here symbolically through the

vested angels what is expressed later with almost painful

explicitness in the sixteenth-century painting of the HWell of

Life or Mystical Winepress (Fig. 27), now preserved in the

Narodni Gallery in Prague. In this later work, the fact that

the mass is the means through which the redemptive grace

of Calvary is channeled to the faithful is made explicit

through the presence of angels vested in amices, albs and

stoles who actually distribute the blood of Christ in mass

chalices which they have dipped from the mystical well filled

from the wine-press in which the body of Christ himself is

being pressed. It should be noted that the priest kneeling in

the foreground of this painting and offering the chalice is

vested, as he should be, in a chasuble. He is the celebrant of

the mass which continues in time the sacrifice which Christ

is represented as offering on the Cross and in the wine-press

in the background.

It would seem, then, that the long tradition in medieval

liturgical drama of presenting angels in the vestments of

subministers of the mass helped to establish a similar tradi-

tion in the visual arts of Flanders. The book illuminators,

especially those associated with the Burgundian Court,

many of whom were from Flanders, were the first to adopt

the convention in painting. And the sculptor Claus Sluter

actually anticipated the panel painters' later symbolic use

of the vested angels in his Well of Moses. Although Byzantine

iconography had developed the convention of angels vested

as deacons and participating in the offering of the Divine

Liturgy, there is no evidence to prove that this tradition had

any direct influence on the development of the convention

of the vested angels as a eucharistic symbol in western

Flemish art.35 The medieval ecclesiastical Latin drama seems

to be the more likely source of the convention as it developed

in the West.

St. Louis University

34 E. Mile, in L'Art religieux de lafin du Moyen-dge en France, 110-12, dis-

cusses the relationship of the Fountain of Life (Fontaine de Vie) and the

Mystical Wine Press (Pressoir Mystique) as symbolizing first the Passion

and death of Christ and finally the Eucharist. He points out that by the

early I6th century the Pressoir Mystique had definitely taken on a

eucharistic significance. He calls attention particularly to the eucharistic

significance in the Pressoir Mystique in the I6th-century windows of the

Abbey Church at Conches. I have suggested in the text that at Dijon

Claus Sluter had given the Well of Life a eucharistic symbolism

through the presence of the vested angels much earlier than the

i6th century. Male, L'Art religieux de la fin du Moyen-dge, 71, suggests

that the costumes of the prophets in the Well of Moses may be derived

from those they wore in the medieval mystery play called the Jugement de

Jesus. In this play Mary pleads with each of the prophets for a reprieve

for her Son; but each of them as a judge uses words from his own writings

to indicate that Christ must die. The words they use in the play are those

painted on the phylacteries of the prophets in the Well of Moses, con-

vincing evidence of the influence of this medieval mystery play on its

composition. If the function, attitudes and costume of the prophets of

Sluter's Well of Moses came from the tradition of the medieval mystery

play, it is highly probable that the liturgical vestments of its angels came

from the same tradition.

35 Since seeing final proof of this article, I have had the opportunity of

reading Professor Lotte Brand Philip's excellent new study of the Ghent

Altarpiece (Princeton University Press, 1971), in which she convincingly

demonstrates the central importance of the Eucharistic theme in the

iconography of that work. Her chapter on "The Eternal Mass," as it

pervasively operates in the polyptych, shows that the Eternal Mass was

perfectly parallel to the Eternal Liturgy which was a constant in the

Byzantine iconographic tradition and in fact may owe something to that

tradition. In it, angels always appeared in the vestments of deacons

assisting Christ as Celebrant of the Eternal Liturgy. It is worth noting

that the angels both in the Musical Angel panels in the upper register in

which, as Professor Philip points out, Christ is functioning as the priest

of the Eternal Mass, and those around the Altar of the Lamb in the

lower register, in which he is represented as the sacrificial victim of the

same Eternal Mass, are all garbed in the vestments of deacons, sub-

ministers of the Mass, as they would have been in the Byzantine Eternal

Liturgy and as they should be here in this iconographic representation

of the Eternal Mass in which Christ himself is both celebrant and sacri-

ficial victim.

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