Concert of Angels

The Concert of Angels — heavenly musicians attending the Virgin, the Christ child, or a celestial scene — was a devotional image type with deep roots in fifteenth-century Flemish painting and continued resonance in Counter-Reformation Antwerp. Hendrick van Balen the Elder's version, held at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, brings his characteristically graceful figure style to a subject that demanded the careful differentiation of musical instruments and the elegant rendering of angelic faces. The Antwerp Counter-Reformation church and its associated confraternities made heavy use of musical imagery to express the harmony of divine praise, and cabinet versions of this subject served wealthy households as reminders of celestial joy. Van Balen's training under Adam van Noort, teacher also of Rubens, gave him the technical foundation to handle this type of multi-figure, decorative religious subject with authority.

The panel support and likely small format of the work allow Van Balen's fine-brush figure technique to display its full precision. Angels are individuated through varied facial types and instrument types — lutes, viols, recorders, and trumpets distinguishing each figure. The warm golden light suffusing the scene is a devotional device linking musical performance to heavenly illumination.