堕天使

Cabanel painted this in 1847 at 24, sent from Rome as one of the required exercises a young prizewinner had to ship home to prove he was improving. He took the moment just after Lucifer's fall, before Milton's poem even begins, with the rebel angel thrown down to earth while the loyal angels still wheel through the bright sky above. Lucifer lies back with his arms crossed over the lower half of his face, and over the edge of that arm two reddened eyes stare straight out, with one tear caught on the lashes. The jury that judged these student works disliked it, finding the body too beautiful and the mood too disturbing for the subject. Cabanel went on to a career of smooth, respectable mythologies, and this early, angry face is the one picture people now attach to his name.