An Angel Playing a Flageolet

An Angel Playing a Flageolet (1878) at Sudley House in Liverpool belongs to the sequence of musician-angel subjects that Burne-Jones produced across multiple media throughout his career. Angels with musical instruments were a staple of Italian Renaissance painting — particularly the musician angels of Melozzo da Forlì and the Venetians — and Burne-Jones engaged this tradition while transforming it through his particular vision of Pre-Raphaelite melancholy and physical beauty. The flageolet — a small end-blown flute — was an archaic instrument associated with pastoral and early music, fitting Burne-Jones's preference for historical and literary subjects removed from contemporary life. Sudley House, once the home of collector George Holt and now a branch of the National Museums Liverpool, preserves an exceptional group of Victorian paintings in their original domestic setting — the angel painting would have been experienced here as part of a personal artistic environment rather than a public gallery.

The single-figure format allows Burne-Jones to concentrate on the angel's figure, face, and the musical instrument in close relationship. The wings — always a technical challenge requiring their feather surfaces to be rendered without becoming ornamental distractions — are built with careful attention to their actual feather structure within the decorative overall form.