Defending Gabriel

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It should come as no surprise that I have heard many remarks over the years that my characterization of the Archangel Gabriel is extremely… girly. Where all of my angel characters are in fact androgynous (or well… at least were created that way) they’re referred to in the masculine and have, for the most part, masculine bodies. Despite this androgyny and the tendancy of having pretty faces, Gabriel in particular seems to delight, confuse, or outright scare people with his femininity.

But over the years people who have watched me on deviantART may have seen me defending his design, citing Classical and Rennaissance art as inspiration. And since no one seems to believe me and since I got a site where I can talk about anything I want with pretty visual aides I’m going to take some time to explore the sources behind Gabriel’s girltastic looks.

Artists: Benedetto Bonfigli (1420-96),
Fra Angelico (1387-1455)

Now the first thing some people might notice is that the appearance of my angels are based more on art and cultural costume than folklore. And if you haven’t noticed that you may wonder what I mean. Well angels being ageless, beautiful  youths with two wings is almost entirely the invention of artists. In the Bible and the Qur’an angels have appeared in human form, but I think the idea that they’d be extraordinarily beautiful is in large part our human notions, we always think something higher than humans would be more beautiful. In the book of Daniel a "man clothed in linen" who is thought to be an angel (Gabriel, in fact, in many traditions) is described as having a body like beryl, a face like lightning, eyes like fire, arms and feet like bronze and, er… loins girded with uphaz (Daniel 10:5-6) Descriptions become even weirder the further you go back. In old Jewish scriptures like The Book of Enoch angels are described as having eyes like fire, feet like fire, spitting fire etc. or as having 100 wings, 70 eyes, 80 tongues, and all sorts of odd things like that. I guess the more appendages you have the more powerful you are. 

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

At any rate, I take my depictions of angels from a wealth of sources scriptural, fictional and visual. And from my general visual take on angels it’s pretty obvious that when it comes to religious paintings I love the Italian Renaissance. And of course, predictably, I’ve collected several books on religious art featuring angels, which is where I scanned the images for this article from. Gabriel in particular is almost always depicted with a very feminine face, moreso than other angels, but the body is always drawn to be a male’s. Although it’s paintings like this (and I’m fairly certain Gabriel has been portrayed in art more than any other angel due to the mountains of "Annunciation" paintings. Hell, I counted 20 or more with him in them just walking through a wing of the Louvre) that have probably lead to both the notion that Gabriel is a female angel and helped in inspiring modern angel depictions to be mostly female. This is a little funny seeing that in Judaism Gabriel is a rather intimidating, frightening angel.

Garofalo (1481-1559)

Somewhere along the line, however, artists began to represent Gabriel with lillies, always showing him holding them (I’ve started to work this into my own art now, it’s contagious), which incidently makes him very easy to recognize in paintings. As you can see by the examples dotted throughout this post, alot of religious paintings are copied or obviously inspired by others, leading to a sort of uniform look (you can see not all the paintings are like this, however.) I heard once that the lily thing was to be friendlier and more feminine, as in Annunciation paintings, where he is most commonly depicted, he’s appearing to the Virgin Mary.  

Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98)

At any rate, I am not the first, nor will I be the last to give the Archangel Gabriel a very feminine appearance (without actually being female.) It just seems to be something in tradition, one of those things that’s hard to say how it began. Curly red hair seems to be a big thing too, I likely was influenced by many paintings of that sort unconciously when first designing Gabriel, and of course being an American I was used to the European artworks. Why do I decide to work off artistic tradition in the designs of my angels? Why to make a bunch of small references no one will pick up on, of course! Also, many times, it’s fun to play around with a familiar motif, and it helps people recognize what you were going for.

Domencio Panetti