The Angel Has Fallen
Ingelore Clason
Alexandre Cabanel, a French Academic and Classical painter, was born in the city of Montpellier in 1823. He showed an early aptitude for sketching and was enrolled at the local art school in his birthplace of Montpellier when he was ten years old. By the age of 17, he had been accepted to the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. For the first time, he exhibited in the Salon de Paris in 1844.
He quickly became a star of the Paris Salon after his debut. His work, which mostly dealt with classical, historical, or religious subjects, was mostly done in the academic style, with a significant Rococo influence.
The L'Ange Dechu, or Fallen Angel, is perhaps one of the most popular works of art ever created. Behind flexed arms, a winged nude hides his face. His brows arch over red-rimmed eyes and a tear of rage as his mane of hair breaks in the wind. Of course, his physique is flawless. Although his posture seems relaxed, each muscle is tensed and ready to fire. This is the last moment before he is cast out of paradise.
The year was 1847, and Alexandre Cabanel, at 24, was well on his way to being among the most important figures in French academic art. Cabanel enrolled at the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of 17, showed art in the Salon de Paris at the age of 21, and was awarded the coveted Prix de Rome scholarship at the age of 22.
Cabanel's early work focused on religious themes, catering to the intellectual preferences of the period. In the salon, he had a picture of a sad Christ in the Guardian of the Olives. Another Christ, this time on trial at the Praetorium and facing Pontius Pilate, was his Prix de Rome winner. However, despite their talent, these paintings are devoid of genuine feeling. Jesus appears uninterested.
Cabanel then struck a speed bump in 1846. He painted a large-scape nude of the athletic Orestes, son of Agamemnon, based on traditional Greek drama, and the academy judges despised it. Their harsh comment was, "An large and incompetent composition."
Although generations of painters had been inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost, Cabanel added a special spark to the story's fallen angels. In Milton's poem, five angels appear: Belial, Moloch, Mammon, Mulciber, and Beelzebub, the last of whom is Beelzebub, better known today as Lucifer.
Cabanel presented the Fallen Angel, the first representation of the devil produced by a pupil, after his earlier rejection by the salon. If he wanted to create a stir, he succeeded. The salon judges were initially taken aback, then disappointed.
In her book Cabanel Procs verbaux de l'Acadmie des Beaux-Arts, Sybille Bellamy-Brown describes the judges as noting, "...the movement is incorrect, the draughtsmanship imprecise, the execution inadequate..." and that it was also judged too romanticist in style.
Cabanel would have to wait three more years for the colossal Death of Moses to win over the critics and judges, but after that, a constant legacy of muscular, melodramatic work cemented his place as the anchor of the French academy. But it all began here, with an angel with fiery eyes, for our money.
The posture is more sulky and defiant than remorseful. The head is raised, and there's that tear in his right eye, but the eyes themselves smoulder with silent anger, and the clasped, linked hands, and elevated elbows indicate that the struggle isn't done. His brilliant, glossy, gracefully flowing feathery wings are breathtaking. He's all set to take off.
FOR some inexplicable reason the sense of smell does not hold the high position it deserves among its sisters. There is something of the fallen angel about it. When it woos us with woodland scents and beguiles us with the fragrance of lovely gardens, it is admitted frankly to our discourse. But when it gives us warning of something noxious in our vicinity, it is treated as if the demon had got the upper hand of the angel, and is relegated to outer darkness, punished for its faithful service. It is most difficult to keep the true significance of words when one discusses the prejudices of mankind, and I find it hard to give an account of odor-perceptions which shall be at once dignified and truthful.
In my experience smell is most important, and I find that there is high authority for the nobility of the sense which we have neglected and disparaged. It is recorded that the Lord commanded that incense be burnt before him continually with a sweet savor. I doubt if there is any sensation arising from sight more delightful than the odors which filter through sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or the tide of scents which swells, subsides, rises again wave on wave, filling the wide world with invisible sweetness. A whiff of the universe makes us dream of worlds we have never seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our dearest experience. I never smell daisies without living over again the ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the fields, while I learned new words and the names of things. Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived. The odor of fruits wafts me to my Southern home, to my childish frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening grain fields far away.
The sense of smell has told me of a coming storm hours before there was any sign of it visible. I notice first a throb of expectancy, a slight quiver, a concentration in my nostrils. As the storm draws nearer, my nostrils dilate the better to receive the flood of earth-odors which seem to multiply and extend, until I feel the splash of rain against my cheek. As the tempest departs, receding farther and farther, the odors fade, become fainter and fainter, and die away beyond the bar of space.
I know by smell the kind of house we enter. I have recognized an old-fashioned country house because it has several layers of odors, left by a succession of families, of plants, perfumes, and draperies.
In the evening quiet there are fewer vibrations than in the daytime, and then I rely more largely upon smell. The sulfuric scent of a match tells me that the lamps are being lighted. Later I note the wavering trail of odor that flits about and disappears. It is the curfew signal; the lights are out for the night.
Out of doors I am aware, by smell and touch, of the ground we tread and the places we pass. Sometimes, when there is no wind, the odors are so grouped that I know the character of the country, and can place a hayfield, a country store, a garden, a barn, a grove of pines, a farmhouse with the windows open.
The other day I went to walk toward a familiar wood. Suddenly a disturbing odor made me pause in dismay. Then followed a peculiar, measured jar, followed by dull, heavy thunder. I understood the odor and the jar only too well. The trees were being cut down. We climbed the stone wall to the left. It borders the wood which I have loved so long that it seems to be my peculiar possession. But today an unfamiliar rush of air and an unwonted outburst of sun told me that my tree friends were gone. The place was empty, like a deserted dwelling. I stretched out my hand. Where once stood the steadfast pines, great, beautiful, sweet, my hand touched raw, moist stumps. All about lay broken branches, like the antlers of stricken deer. The fragrant, piled-up sawdust swirled and tumbled about me. An unreasoning resentment flashed through me at this ruthless destruction of the beauty that I love. But there is no anger, no resentment in nature. The air is equally charged with the odors of life and of destruction, for death equally with growth forever ministers to all-conquering life. The sun shines as ever, and the winds riot through the newly opened spaces. I know that a new forest will spring where the old one stood, as beautiful, as beneficent.
Smell gives me more idea than touch or taste of the manner in which sight and hearing probably discharge their functions. Touch seems to reside in the object touched, because there is a contact of surfaces. In smell there is no notion of relievo [relief], and odor seems to reside not in the object smelt, but in the organ. Since I smell a tree at a distance, it is comprehensible to me that a person sees it without touching it. I am not puzzled over the fact that he receives it as an image on his retina without relievo, since my smell perceives the tree as a thin sphere with no fullness or content. By themselves, odors suggest nothing. I must learn by association to judge from them of distance, of place, and of the actions or the surroundings, which are the usual occasions for them, just as I am told people judge from color, light, and sound.
I have not, indeed, the all-knowing scent of the hound or the wild animal. None but the halt and the blind need fear my skill in pursuit; for there are other things besides water, stale trails, confusing cross tracks to put me at fault. Nevertheless, human odors are as varied and capable of recognition as hands and faces. The dear odors of those I love are so definite, so unmistakable, that nothing can quite obliterate them. If many years should elapse before I saw an intimate friend again, I think I should recognize his odor instantly in the heart of Africa, as promptly as would my brother that barks.
Once, long ago, in a crowded railway station, a lady kissed me as she hurried by. I had not touched even her dress. But she left a scent with her kiss, which gave me a glimpse of her. The years are many since she kissed me. Yet her odor is fresh in my memory.
Fallen Angel is deep gold in color with tiny, conniving bubbles forming a very thick, meticulous head. Effervescent and crisp, this deliriously delicious ale tempts the palate with apple, pear and a little earthy mustiness. Its beauty and brightness creates an angel-like appearance but the devil is in its determined fortitude.
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