Saint Pius V (1566 to 1572), whose professed name was Michael, also took an interest in angels durin

Saint Pius V (1566 to 1572), whose professed name was Michael, also took an interest in angels during his pontificate. His apartments in the Vatican are now part of the museums and contain the mosaic displays and Jan Matejko’s enormous oil painting of the Treaty of Vienna, but he also commissioned a little chapel, now used as a vestibule to the Sistine Chapel, where most visitors never look up to see Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari’s cupola fresco, The Fall of the Rebel Angels. In this work, seven exquisite angels in pastel armor pose gracefully while skewering seven misshapen demons. Their wings suggest that these disfigured creatures were once angels, while now they are a mishmash of animal heads, tails and claws grafted onto what were once beautiful bodies. The base of the dome reveals a scorched cityscape, as buildings burn and crumble. The angels, however, come from the ring of light in the center of the dome where putti faces watch the ensuing combat.This fresco was more than a defense of Scholastic theology: Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth for heresy, opposed the French Huguenots, gathered a fleet against the Ottoman Turks and resisted the internal pressures from Catholics who wanted to see the Church soften on doctrine in order to accommodate the new circumstances of the post-Reformation world. Pius responded to these challenges with the vigorous image of angels quelling rebellion, confident in serving the true light. https://aleteia.org/2017/06/06/angels-in-art-visualizing-the-invisible/ -- source link

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