Show IN THE WRONG PLAGE abeels could fly with the wins whre artists place them did you ever notice a flying angel I 1 do not mean the animated article but the winged and robed creatures you see occasionally in frescos and friezes if so you have doubtless marked the horizontal and unearthly position of the body the hands are gracefully disposed along the aidea just as if flying were no particular effort and the feet are trailed straight behind though no man lias ever found out just what holds them there it has been so since the time of michael angelo and raphael says the new york world those old masters were probably among the first offenders against physical possibilities they frescoed the wall and ceilings of ancient cathedrals with ethereal beings with enormous wings sprouting from their shoulder blades and their feet trailing straight out behind since then every artistic tom dick and ciany in the world has followed the impossible lines laid down by the old painters and although science has been developed and human ideas leave changed greatly since athens was in its prime the absurd form of the ideal angel has not changed a particle anybody can see at a glance at the pictures that this position in flight is an impossibility possibly at a speed of a mile a second and with the wings beating at the rate of one hundred thousand times a minute the position might be maintained the of is the shoulder blades the center of gravity is nowhere apparently it may be possible that painters desire to represent an angel doing something that a human being would find impossible to do at any rate they have done so with the wings at the shoulder shon lder blades the center of gravity would extend directly downward from the points of support it is not very graceful but it is true to science and the law of gravitation it will be a long time however before painters consent to paint angels in other than impossible positions everybody remembers how reluctant artists were to accept the positions of running horses developed by the camera they were so absurd that it was with difficulty that the negatives could be believed in order to carry the body in a horizontal position the wings of an angel should be placed in the small of the back and the vertebral vertebras verte bras stiffened with a then perhaps there would be somi sort of an agreement between art and physical possibility |