After Caravaggio: The Angel
An angel plays a lullaby from a real score while the holy family sleeps. Between the wings, a magnolia.
Caravaggio · c. 1597 · Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
The original
Caravaggio, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c. 1597, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome · Wikipedia
Monica's drawing
Backpiece: magnolia in a lace frame · Monica, Dark Autumn Studio
On skin
AI visualisation of a real design. Not a photograph of a tattoo.
The painting
Rest on the Flight into Egypt, painted around 1597, hangs in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome. Mary and the child sleep on the right; on the left an old Joseph holds up a sheet of music for an angel playing the violin. The music is legible. It is a real motet by Noel Bauldeweyn on words from the Song of Songs, which begin: how beautiful you are. Caravaggio shows the angel from behind, wrapped only in a white cloth, with the wings opening out of a bare back. It is one of the few times he turns a figure away from us, and the first thing you see is skin.
The design
Monica's backpiece, the magnolia in its black lace-edged frame, placed between the shoulder blades where the wings meet. The leaves follow the line of the feathers.
Why this pairing
Caravaggio gave the angel wings and left the space between them empty for four hundred years. A magnolia blooms before it has leaves, on bare wood, in the cold. It seemed like the right thing to put there.
