With so many angels involved in orchestrating the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, it is no wonder that they became a symbol of the Christmas holiday. Today’s Christmas angels frequently appear as winged human beings in flowing white robes with somewhat feminine faces and haloes. This image evolved over the course of two millennia.
The very first Christian depictions of angels date back to the time of the Roman Empire. Early Christian paintings of angels rendered them as ordinary men rather than as winged, spiritual beings. Some artists, however, garbed their angels in white robes, resembling a Roman senator’s toga, in order to symbolize their power and dignity. The first winged angels appeared in the fourth century. Some scholars believe that early Christian artists patterned the image of winged angels after the Greek goddess Nike, the winged, female spirit of victory. Others trace this image back even further to winged spirits associated with the religion of ancient Babylon. By the fifth century Christian artists from the Byzantine Empire began to depict angels with a disk of light, called a nimbus, behind their heads. This nimbus, or halo, signifies holiness, purity, and spiritual power.
In medieval times most western European artists portrayed angels as masculine in face and form. This trend reversed itself from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. After that time, western European angels acquired softer, more feminine, or androgynous, looks. Sometimes they appeared as chubby children or toddlers. Artists often depicted angels with harps or other musical instruments. These emblems signify what some consider to be the primary occupation of angels—praising God.
Don't ask me the brand of the stamped image coz I really have no idea :( I used Spica pens for the hair, metallic pens for the trumpet and the inner part of the sleeves then simply stickles for the wings and the robe. Yup, thick foils were used as background and embossed with cuttlebug embossing folders.
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