Happy Valentine's Day!

Be My Unicorn
Medium: digital art

The Fall of Lucifer

Defeated Foe
Medium: digital painting

Depicting the fall of Lucifer, this painting seeks to portray Lucifer as very real, but that  he is a defeated foe. For all his talk, he's nothing more than a created being completely under God's control. His halo, which was used in traditional Christian artwork to portray purity and innocence, is shattering, and his wings are being burned black. In the background, another angel has already made the choice to be burned and is being chased out of Heaven.

A fair amount of research went into this painting. According to Ezekial 28:14, Lucifer is, or was, a cherub (singular of cherubim, and not to be confused with the secular Putti, nude infants with wings). Fortunately for me, cherubim are one of the few angelic creatures that the Bible actually gives us a description of, however vague and confusing it may be. Ezekial 1:4-28 and Ezekial 10 describe cherubim as having four wings and four faces - human, bull, lion, and eagle (interestingly enough, avian, bovine, human, and feline features appear frequently in pagan religious artwork, leading to the theory that many pagan gods may actually have been fallen cherubim, perhaps Satan himself. Seeing as he wanted to be like God, it stands to reason that he would want people to worship him as a god.) It's not said what their bodies look like, but Ezekial does describe them as having human hands. They are described as having calf's feet, and, while his feet are in shadow, I do paint him with cloven feet. It's speculated that the satyr image of devils originated with the calf foot description. Ezekial also describes them as sometimes being accompanied by concentric wheels which are "full of eyes," and that the spirits of the cherubim are within the wheels (perhaps some sort of angelic external hard drive?), but as it's uncertain if the Ophanum, as they are called, are part of the cherubim or simply another creature that typically accompanies them. In Luke 2:18, Lucifer is described as falling from Heaven "like lightning," which I incorporated as God's judgment taking the form of lightning.