The Fall of the Rebel Angels with St Michael Fighting the Dragon
Neri di Bicci·1480
Historical Context
The Fall of the Rebel Angels with St Michael Fighting the Dragon, at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, shows the archangel Michael's cosmic battle with Satan and his rebel host—a subject that permitted artists to represent physical struggle and spiritual drama simultaneously. Painted around 1480, this later work by Neri di Bicci shows an artist keeping pace with the more dynamic compositional approaches that had become current in Florence through the influence of Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio. The Rotterdam museum holds this as part of its strong collection of early Italian and Netherlandish panels.
Technical Analysis
The central combat between Michael and the dragon is set against a pale sky, the archangel's armor rendered in silver-grey tempera while the dragon is painted in dark greens and blacks. The falling rebel angels below are shown in varied attitudes of tumbling and anguish, Neri attempting a more kinetically complex composition than was typical of his earlier devotional panels.
