Angels can often be distinguished from humans in Christian art by the presence of a few physical characteristics that would be unnatural on the actual human form. These characteristics are, in the line of thinking laid out by Pseudo-Dionysius in "On the Celestial Hierarchy," more metaphorical than they are actually descriptive. There is no correct or incorrect way to portray an angel, and no physical characteristic, natural or otherwise, that must exist in order for a figure in a painting to be an angel. However, there are popular trends in the characteristics meant to signify angels that recur regularly in angelic artwork and iconography. The most common of these visual indicators are wings, so much so that angels have become almost synonymous in pop culture with winged people.
On a human being, wings are quite an unnatural physical feature. By virtue of simian evolution, no living person has had, currently has, or ever will have wings of any kind, whether bird, insect, or bat. However, in another context, the animal wings with which angels are so often portrayed are purely natural, in the sense that they are transposed directly from nature. The physical characteristics of angels are composites of natural elements which would not appear together in nature, but which, as divine metaphors rather than actual structures, elevate the Natural to the level of the Supernatural, thereby conveying through visual form angelic proximity to God.
Here, the term Supernatural does not refer to the popularized modern definition of supernatural, and although the meanings are related, they differ in key ways. Supernatural as it is being used here may be better understood by transcribing it as super-natural, that is, as extra-natural or ultra-natural, which was the original meaning of the word. It is now used to mean something closer to unnatural, a linguistic shift that occurred when the religious connotations became diluted and transformed overtime.
Medieval scholars used the term supernaturalis, but its meaning differed from what we now mean by “supernatural”. For us, “supernatural” means something like the opposite of nature, something that lies outside nature’s borders. For medieval thinkers, on the contrary, supernaturalis was closely connected with nature: supernaturalis was, so to speak, an absolutely natural continuation of nature – or, alternatively, “natural” was quite a natural continuation of supernaturalis. In any case, natural and supernatural were not opposed notions; they rather completed each other. As John Scotus Erigena said, “God, who is supernatural, comes before nature” (Deus, qui supernaturalis est, praecedit naturam). Nature follows the supernatural, their relation can be described as a mutual complement, not an opposition or contradiction.
Makhov, 29
God was considered supernatural not because God couldn't be explained by nature or exist within nature, as tends to be the modern connotation, but because God was considered nature in its purest, most undiluted form. All things in nature were thought of as an extension of God, while at the same time, God was thought of as an extension of nature, transcending and encompassing it.
The connection between the current meaning of supernatural and the original meaning of supernatural is not non-existent, however, and depictions of angel wings are good examples of how this can be true. The natural elements which make up the images of angels seem unnatural in their discordance with each other, which points to their supernatural-ness as it is currently defined. And yet it is exactly this discordance that contributes to an angel's supernatural-ness in the original sense: each natural element which appears represents a greater connection to nature, and as a result, the sum of their parts, while technically an unnatural thing, becomes super-natural, extra-natural, ultra-natural because it is comprised of so many natural elements. In this way, the unnatural naturalness of angels wings serves as a metaphor for angelic nature and the nature of God.
- Makhov, A. (2011). … IN DIVERSAS FIGURAS NEQUITIAE: THE DEVIL’S IMAGE FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF RHETORIC. In Jaritz G. (Ed.), Angels, Devils:
The Supernatural and Its Visual Representation (pp. 29-50). Central European University Press. Retrieved December 24, 2020, from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt2jbng3.7
The Supernatural and Its Visual Representation (pp. 29-50). Central European University Press. Retrieved December 24, 2020, from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt2jbng3.7