Triumph of the Rebel Angels, 2019

32" x 24" acrylic on board; Basic Frame

This painting takes as its starting point the classical trope of The Fall of the Rebel Angels—a subject rendered by artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Luca Giordano, and Rubens. In the traditional telling, the rebel host, led by Lucifer, is cast down from heaven by the archangel Michael and his loyal angels. The narrative embodies cosmic justice: divine order prevailing over pride, heresy, and rebellion. Fallen angels are shown tumbling into the abyss, grotesque in their corruption, crushed beneath the weight of righteousness.

Inverting this vision, Triumph of the Rebel Angels depicts a host of grotesque-yet-angelic creatures in flight, not plummeting but soaring. Below them stretches a burning field, not of defeated demons but of desperate, skyward-reaching hands—humanity in torment, perhaps, or the remnants of a creation abandoned. The rebels are no longer defeated; they are ascendant, their monstrous beauty illuminated against a backdrop of ruin.

This reversal raises questions about the nature of rebellion and victory. Who are the true victors: those who submit to divine order, or those who seize their own destiny even at terrible cost? By shifting the outcome, the painting unsettles the viewer, confronting them with the possibility of a world where the hierarchy of heaven is overturned, where grotesque angels revel in their liberation, and where humanity is left to smolder in the wake of their triumph.

The imagery not only challenges the long tradition of Christian allegory but also gestures toward a more ambiguous truth: that history is written by victors, and that in another telling, even the damned might see themselves as conquerors.

Reverse: a lonely soul emerging from the mist.