Video: Lucifer Liege: the secret of one of the most magnificent sculptures of a fallen angel
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Lucifer's appearance has several interpretations. He was portrayed as a serpent, and a dragon, and a huge sea monster, but the most famous image in the Christian religion from about the 17th century was still assigned to a fallen angel. This image of Lucifer has been taken as a basis in many works of art, including the magnificent statue in Liege Cathedral.
In the Cathedral of St. Paul in Liege, in the pulpit, there is a magnificent white marble sculpture of Lucifer, which is the pride of this cathedral. Its author is the Belgian artist Guillaume Gifs.
The sculpture depicts a beautiful young man sitting on a rock with folded wings, chained by his right ankle and left wrist. A drapery hanging from his right shoulder wraps around his hips. Horns appear on the head, toenails are long and sharp, like claws. Lucifer's face expresses remorse and despair, a tear flows from his left eye.
The gesture and bowed head emphasize the theme of punishment. At his feet is the bitten forbidden fruit, the apple, and the broken tip of the scepter, the starry decoration of which made Lucifer stand out from other angels.
Magnificent sculpture! But it turns out that until 1848 in its place was another, no less beautiful, made by Guillaume's younger brother Joseph Giffs.
The versions of the sculptures by the brothers Guillaume and Joseph are strikingly similar at first glance. In both, a fallen angel with folded wings sits on a rock, the upper body, arms and legs are bared. The veined webbed wings clearly resemble the wings of a bat.
But, wings aside, Lucifer Joseph looks like a fine youth. And his wings only emphasize the beauty of the young body. At his feet he has a satanic symbol - a writhing snake. The expression in the eyes is serious, one might even say cruel and arrogant. A beautiful fallen angel … but not yet repentant …
However, many felt that Joseph's too exalted Lucifer was not in keeping with the Christian ideal. And, besides, the sculpture of an almost naked beautiful youth distracted many parishioners from their sermons. It is this allure of "unhealthy beauty" and the humanization of Lucifer, which were the subject of endless controversy, and caused the sculpture of Joseph, which stood for six years, was nevertheless removed from the cathedral.
The humanization of Lucifer through nudity is also characteristic of the work of the Italian sculptor Costantino Corti, executed several years after the version of Gifs. Corti depicts his rebellious Lucifer completely naked, only the top of the rock on which he sits slightly covers his nakedness. This sculpture has survived only as copies and in engravings.
There are several other sculptures in the world depicting Lucifer in the form of a fallen angel.
Non-superstitious people should see the devilry of wax and bronze - Rich self-portraits by Jan Fabre in the series of sculptures CHAPTERS I - XVIII.
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