[Illustration: FRA ANGELICO.--AN ANGEL CONDUCTING A SOUL TO HEAVEN.]
to raise their eyes to Christ, nor even to look at the blessed of his kingdom.
It would be a pleasure to consider separately the different methods of representing the Judge of all the world and those surrounding him, as seen in the works of the masters, but we are here concerned with the angels alone, of which, in nearly all these pictures, there are three classes.
The angels who hold the cross, scourge, nails, crown of thorns, and other symbols of the Passion of Christ, emphasize the theological teaching that men are judged according to their acceptance or rejection of the Atonement by Christ for the sins of the world. In early pictures of the Judgment these angels stand on clouds, below the Judge, but later they were depicted as hovering above the Judgment Seat. In whatever position they are placed, they appear to attribute a vast importance to the prominence of the symbols of the Passion. Fra Angelico happily places a single angel at the feet of Christ with the cross alone, as a complete symbol of the suffering and death of Jesus.
The trumpet angels vary in number from two to many, and are differently placed according to the varying designs of the artists. Orcagna and Fra Angelico placed them below the Judge, thus indicating that their sound could be heard in all the earth. In other pictures, they sound the trumpets directly above the graves, which open, displaying the rising dead, startled from their long sleep and struggling to gain a foothold on the earth above.
The third class of angels are those who announce their fate to all who are to be judged. They sometimes hold the balance in which souls are weighed; again, they direct those who come to judgment to the right or left, as in our picture from the Last Judgment by Fra Angelico, in the Florentine Academy; and, again, as in Orcagna’s great picture in the Campo Santo at Pisa, a grand warrior angel, with splendid wings,--a true St. Michael,--clad in full armor, with his sword by his side, a glorious halo about his head, and the angelic flame above his brow, holds out two scrolls,--one of joy and one of woe,--on which are written the names of the entire human race.