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The Wounded Angel
Hugo Simberg · Symbolism & Art Nouveau
- Artist
- Hugo Simberg (1873–1917)
- Date
- 1903
- Dimensions
- 127 x 154 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
The Wounded Angel shows two boys carrying a stretcher on which sits a young angel in a white robe, her eyes bandaged and one wing stained with blood. She holds a small bunch of white snowdrops. The procession moves along a path through a bleak spring landscape by the water.
A closer look
The scene is strangely simple and mysterious: the boys look serious, one of them turning to stare directly at the viewer, and the angel bows her head in silence. The setting is recognisable as a park on the shore in Helsinki, where there were charitable institutions for the blind and for children. Simberg never explained the meaning, leaving viewers free to interpret it. He painted it after recovering from a serious illness, and many see in it a vision of fragility, suffering and hope, symbolised by the first spring flowers.
History of the painting
Soon after finishing the painting, Simberg returned to the subject on a monumental scale: in 1905–1906 he painted The Wounded Angel and The Garland of Life as frescoes in the new Tampere Cathedral, where their unusual imagery for a church caused controversy. The canvas itself entered the Finnish National Gallery in the Ateneum in 1928.