This will make the most sense if you can take a look at our Pinterest board by the same title while you read this! https://www.pinterest.com/hiddentheatre/the-war-in-heaven-ymp-2026/an-art-history-of-the-war-in-heaven/

Let me preface this all by saying, I am not an art historian. I’m just someone who enjoys art, galleries and museums, and I find art useful as a window into how people look at their world and their stories. There’s a theatrical, narrative quality to a lot of historic art, and it says so much about the society which created it. As we head into the design phase of working on “The War in Heaven”, I like to take some inspiration from the art surrounding it- not to recreate imagery (ours will not be a medieval Sunday in the Park with George), but to consider: what symbolism follows a biblical tale? How did medieval people imagine it, versus Renaissance citizens, versus people today? What visual cues are inescapable, and what’s changed, and why?

The “Fall of the Rebel Angels”, as it’s almost universally titled in art, has been fairly popular inspiration for painters for the better part of a millennium. That alone is interesting, because the story in the Bible is relatively thin, scattered across several books; the art, like our play, is reflecting the traditions that have accrued around it, far more than what the text itself says.

The earliest images that I was able to find are from illuminated manuscripts, and date to the 13th century. There is a consistent vocabulary in displaying the Fall of the Angels, with God central, in some sort of sphere, surrounded by many angel faces, and below him, an enormous, open hellmouth into which the fallen drop. One mid-14th century painter, known only as the Master of the Rebel Angels (and known only from two pieces) departs from this to show one side of heaven as empty choir stalls at the very top of the work, while the dominant image is a mixture of robed angels and black daemons falling towards an orb that looks rather like a rotten piece of fruit, sucking them into holes. It’s legitimately one of the creepier iterations of the story. 

These early renditions have a fairly consistent colour palette: golds, blues, reds, browns. A century later the colors expand vastly, and the symmetry that largely frames the majority of the earlier paintings disappears, while the art itself moves from manuscript to displayable painting. Nicholas Frances’ “The Fall of the Angels” is almost Easter-egg pretty with pastels and a soft, velvet quality to the paint. In truth, his fallen angels look more like they’ve fallen asleep, and the way the good angels appear to be pushing them down a river to the daemons below reminds me a bit of nineteenth century log-drivers in America’s upper midwest. Similarly colourful, Neri diBicci’s two iterations of “Fallen Angels” strike me as somehow science-fictional, as if St Michael is fighting dragons on Mars. It’s worth noting, though, that while colourful and somewhat fantastic, there is what I can only describe as a calmness to these paintings. They aren’t overly crowded, the motions portrayed aren’t frantic, and you can stop and look at the details without feeling overwhelmed. They’re also, quite honestly, about as peaceful as a fall into Hell could be.

Skip ahead again and that all changes. The 16th century Falls are, for the most part, crowded, messy, busy, chaotic, detailed. Hieronymus Bosch, whose “Garden of Earthly Delights” triptych may not depict the Fall but is one of the most gloriously creative interpretations of Heaven, Earth, and Hell ever painted, created a “Fall of the Angels” that, while both metaphorically and literally pale by comparison, includes some of his signature features: weird human-animal hybrids, flying monsters, and the odd suggestion that musical instruments may be terrifying. He in turn inspired Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose “Fall of the Rebel Angels” is something you can stare at for hours and keep finding something new. What I find most fascinating about it is that his St Michael, although the “hero” of the narrative, dressed in golden armour with a blue cape flying behind him- gold and blue being two of the colours traditionally associated with all things heavenly- has long, skinny limbs, joints accentuated by armour, and an oddly small head, all of which together makes me think of a stick insect or a praying mantis. It’s an interesting waypoint, far more complex and distressing than the era preceding it, but still decidedly unrealistic and removed from humanity.

Whatever flesh Bruegel’s angel Michael may lack, the Renaissance artists, who really seem to have found the Fall of Angels inspirational, will make up for it, for their versions are seas of flesh. Their St Michaels are, almost to a one, clad in blue armour and red capes, armed with swords and shields, and they’ve been putting in a lot of hours at the gym. So have the fallen angels, who are now stripped of wings, and grotesquery… and clothing. (This is one aspect which, I promise, will not be featured in our Mystery Play!) This was a period when art became fascinated with the details of human anatomy, with the angles of twisted limbs and the colours and contours of flesh, muscle, and sinew, and for whom the ideal body, whether earthly or angelic, allowed for the maximum study of these aspects.

Other iterations moved beyond framed paintings for the wall in this period: a version of the Fall was designed (though not completed) for the ceiling of the chapel at Versailles, while the story also moves into the realm of sculpture. The detail on these carved works is astonishing, and while they keep some of the style of paintings in their era- a pleated tunic for St Michael, angels and daemons naked and buff- they also offer an item which returns them to their medieval roots in the forms of hellmouths, with the round ears and upturned snouts of a Chinese dragon, or a small lapdog. They are every bit as extravagant as the paintings, giving a sense of the chaos and density of bodies that was envisioned for this episode in the mid-1700s.

Prints abound during the later Georgian and Victorian period, modelled on the paintings of the previous century, now presented in black-and-white, suitable for mass distribution. Unto themselves, they seem less of a creative leap in style, more a carrying-on of Early Modern artistic tradition. My favourite discovery from this century, however, uses the Fall as a parody. It’s a cartoon of Queen Victoria and many of the politicians of her day. The good angels are now respectably clad in long robes and have feathered wings, while the fallen have leathery wings and wear loincloths (presumably a Victorian equation with barbarism)… but almost all of them have the beards and muttonchops that were fashionable in the period and seem, to modern eyes, most decidedly un-angelic! I love it because it shows the familiarity that Victorian audiences had with the story of the Fallen Angels, and also with the previous centuries’ artwork depicting it, since parody only works if you understand the reference points it’s using.

Narrative art (rather than abstract) may be slightly less fashionable these days that in centuries past, and biblical stories no longer dominate the vocabulary from which artists can draw. Nevertheless, a quick perusal of sites like Pinterest or Etsy will show that “The War in Heaven” is still inspiring artists, most of whose work contain references to the earlier depictions. They’re us: carrying on a centuries-old tradition, mining its cues and iconography for inspiration, and then building something new for the 21st century. And that’s why I keep going back to the artwork when trying to brainstorm how our play should look.