Alexandre Cabanel, a French painter, made The Fallen Angel in Rome in 1847, when he was 24. It shows Lucifer after his fall from heaven, a nude young man with dark wings lying on a rock.
He hides his mouth and chin behind crossed arms. Over them one eye, rimmed with red, glares out of the picture, with a tear sliding beneath it. The canvas, 121 by 189.7 cm (48 by 75 in), belongs to the Musée Fabre of Montpellier, Cabanel's birthplace.
Its wide fame is recent. Since 2018, online searches for the picture have climbed, and the angel's furious stare has become a pose copied on TikTok.
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What is The Fallen Angel painting about?
High above the rock, a line of small pale figures drifts up into the gray sky, and the painter himself explained in a letter what they are doing there…
What You'll Discover
Which lines of a 1667 English poem match the picture
Where the name Lucifer appears in the Bible
What Cabanel called his angel in a letter
Which ancient marble the body seems to echo
What happened to the canvas when Cabanel died
What brought the painting back to life online