In a few Crucifixions, in which the three crosses appear, angels are receiving the soul of the penitent thief, while demons quarrel over that of the unrepentant criminal. Unpleasant as this treatment is, it is the logical result of the belief that a good or bad angel attended every death, and bore the soul to St. Michael for judgment, as is depicted in many ancient works of art. The spirits of the blessed are tenderly carried skyward, but the translation of lost souls is attended with some revolting details.
Gradually fewer angels were represented at the Crucifixion, and an apparently unwritten law limited them to two or three with chalices; indeed, for a time this scene was far less frequently pictured.
Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, Lombard painters of the fifteenth century, again portrayed so many angels, and such numberless little winged heads, that the upper portions of their Crucifixions were alive with them. These artists, with their refined tenderness of manner, created angels that have rarely, if ever, been excelled in what may be termed a genuine angelic quality. Especially is this true of Gaudenzio; the lamenting angels above his Crucifixion, in the church at Varallo, are among the most satisfactory representations of angels that occur in any picture of this scene.
If the Resurrection of Christ is to be represented, the angel is appropriately present; but as no account of the scene is given in the Bible, and no one witnessed it, each artist who portrayed it was at liberty to give his imagination full play in his work. For a long time there were no pictures of this subject, its treatment being confined to carvings in ivory, on shrines and other small objects. The greater number of artists apparently esteemed it as too sacred, as well as too tremendous, a subject to be adequately conceived and satisfactorily presented.
So far as I can learn, the Resurrection was first painted by Giotto, as one of a series of small pictures upon a press for the sacred vessels in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence; it is now in the Academy of that city. In this picture there is no angel. Fra Angelico represents the Maries talking with the angel, while Christ is suspended in air above them. By degrees the designs for this subject were modified, until, in the picture in the Vatican which has been attributed to Perugino, the rising Christ, bearing the banner of victory, is worshipped by two angels. This work is now believed to be by Raphael, as his authenticated studies for it are in the Oxford Collection.