Between the Cherubim

Just who dreamed up these chubby little charmers with no clothes on? Their wings seem so inadequate for flying. Certainly their full-grown angels must despair that they will ever be of use to them. So there they are, the lighter touch to make the saints seem more approachable-- make glad their eyes and steer their hearts ...let us know the higher realms do laugh, despite an ever-present dour necessity of sending sinners, somber saints and seraphic sojourners to their proper rooms "up there." All this, one might suppose, a matter of the checks and balances the angelic air we have created certainly demands, for all the here below could never be more fair. Their talented creators allow them only smiles; they never speak inside their gaudy frames of gold, but one could not presume they are newborn, for they adorn the central characters with such a chubby grace that heavenly halos drift among them and it is not unreasonable to expect that one of them might be impetuous enough to stretch his stubby arms and catch a filmy orb as it floats by. There's the answer. They're a natural for Rubens and his fleshy friends who took delight in finding something common in the converse of their holy earth, and dualistic heaven, the one the Renaissance saw clearly, while post-modern man may not. ~