Two Angels in Flight

Art Historical Context

Charles de La Fosse a leading French painter of late Baroque period, this expressive study around 7–1710. Known for fluid compositions and warm palette influenced by Venetian and Rubensian traditions, La Fosse often produced such drawings as preparatory works for grand decorative schemes in churches and royal residences. The sheet captures two angels in dynamic flight, their drapery and limbs conveying a sense of weightless movement typical of ceiling fresco designs popular in early eighteenth-century France. Executed in red chalk with touches of black and white heightening on tan laid paper, the drawing the artist’s masterful handling of light and volume. This technique, favored by Frenchmen of the period, allowed La Fosse to model the figures sculpturally while suggesting the luminous, heavenly atmosphere of the final painted work. Measuring just under nine by ten and a half inches, the intimate scale invites close looking at the delicate transitions between chalk strokes. Now preserved in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Prints and Drawings collection, *Two Angels in Flight* offers visitors a rare glimpse into the creative process behind Baroque religious decoration, revealing how artists translated fleeting gestures into enduring images of divine grace.