Angel Blowing a Trumpet
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)
1857–59
- Medium
- black chalk
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 44.1 x 54 cm (17 3/8 x 21 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The figure in this drawing closely resembles a number of trumpeting angels in drawings that Edgar Degas made between 1856 and 1858 in preparation for an ambitious but ultimately unrealized history painting on the subject of Saint John the Evangelist accompanied by an angel. Rather than referring to any single passage in the Book of Revelation, Degas distilled an image from passages describing seven trumpeting angels who unleash destruction on earth with their blasts, the voice of Christ that addresses John in loud tones "like a trumpet," and individual angels who lead and instruct the Evangelist.
