Relief with Half Figure of an Angel

Relief with Half Figure of an Angel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This angel, with its soft facial features and weighty, voluminous folds of drapery, represents the medieval style of sculpture typical of Venice in the early 1400s. The earliest sculpture in this gallery, it belongs to a category of figures in high relief made by itinerant workshops for altarpieces and choir screens in churches in northern Italy and Venice. Saints or angels were often massed together within elaborate architectural frames. Half-length angels such as this one often surrounded images of a saint or the Virgin and Child, becoming heavenly mediators between the divine world and that of the viewer.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Relief with Half Figure of an AngelRelief with Half Figure of an AngelRelief with Half Figure of an AngelRelief with Half Figure of an AngelRelief with Half Figure of an Angel

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.