Head of an Angel (c. 1750): Art, History and Details

Head of an Angel (c. 1750) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer (German, 1696–1770).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This decorative bracket was intended to simulate a functional supporting element at the top of a pilaster or beneath an organ loft or pulpit in a church. Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer, a member of a family of artists active in southern Germany and Switzerland, worked in a variety of media including wood and stucco. He often enlisted the aid of assistants, one of whom may have executed this work.

Object facts

• Title: Head of an Angel
• Date: c. 1750
• Creator attribution: Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer (German, 1696–1770)
• Culture: Germany, 18th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: painted and gilded wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 48.1 x 64.3 x 23.6 cm (18 15/16 x 25 5/16 x 9 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1989.154

A detail from the museum

Part of the angel's wings are made more luxurious by the addition of gold paint, a process called "gilding."

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ditner, David Charles. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century European Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Dissertation. Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University, 1986.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.