Six-Winged Seraph (Azrael)
Mikhail Vrubel (1856 to 1910) · 1904
A being with enormous eyes and six wings fills the canvas, holding a sword in one hand and a smoking lamp in the other. Its face is neither male nor female, its hair falls in blue-black coils, and the wings are broken into shards of violet, green, silver and gold as if made of stained glass or ice. The painting takes its subject from Pushkin's poem The Prophet, in which a six-winged seraph appears at a crossroads and transforms the poet with fire and a burning coal; the alternative title Azrael refers to the angel of death.
Vrubel painted in facets. Look closely at any patch of wing or robe and you will find the surface divided into small angular planes of colour laid side by side with a palette knife and a square brush. This mosaic method, borrowed from Byzantine church decoration and from his own work in ceramics, makes the surface flicker and gives the figure its unearthly hardness. The eyes are the one place where the planes soften into an almost hypnotic stare. Step back and the fragments fuse into a form; step forward and they fall apart again.
Vrubel made the picture in nineteen hundred and four, between stays in psychiatric clinics, at a time when his sight was beginning to fail and his obsession with angels and demons was at its height. His late works were bought by collectors close to the Symbolist circle and reached the Russian Museum after the Revolution. For a generation of Russian poets the picture was an emblem of the artist as prophet, and Alexander Blok spoke at Vrubel's funeral of a man who had seen too much. A detail to notice: the small flame in the lamp is painted with the same red as the seraph's lips.
Did You Know? Vrubel painted a number of seraphim and prophets in his final years, and reportedly continued to draw angels even after he had gone completely blind.
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