Three Angels

Three Angels by Bernardo Strozzi, painted in 1633 and now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, presents a cluster of celestial figures whose subject matter — angels as pure spiritual beings rendered in physical form — gave Baroque painters their most challenging assignment: how to depict beings defined by their non-corporeal nature using the only means available to painting, which is the representation of bodies. Strozzi's Venetian formation led him to approach angels as he approached all figures: robustly, with warm flesh, specific physiognomies, and drapery that behaves according to physical laws. The MFA Boston holds important Italian Baroque works that trace the development of Genoese and Venetian painting, and this Strozzi occupies a significant place in that narrative. The three angels may reference a specific theological subject — a Trinity, an Annunciation prefiguration, or an independent devotional image — or may be a purely formal exercise in multiple-figure painting.

Canvas with Strozzi's characteristic warm palette applied to three closely grouped figures. Wing feathers across three pairs of wings require sustained layered attention. The figures' overlapping creates spatial compression that Strozzi handles through tonal differentiation — cooler passages for receding figures, warmer and more saturated for the foreground angel. Drapery in various warm colors creates chromatic richness.