The seven angels in the niches over the TMC altar were painted by an artist named Thomas Langan as a gift from Colin Deans. They were dedicated on Easter Day, 1907.

Each angel is painted on a canvas nine by three feet which has been affixed to the wall. Each one holds a musical instrument, and at the foot of each is the title of a chant from one of the monastic offices of the day.
The angels were copied from paintings by Fra Angelico in the San Marco Convent in Florence, Italy. They include seven of the twelve angels painted inside the frame of the Linaiuoli Tabernacle of the Madonna. The tabernacle was commissioned by the guild hall of the Linaiuoli (linen merchants) in 1433; it is Fra Angelico’s only painting commissioned by a secular organization. The frame of the tablernacle was sculpted in marble by Ghiberti (famed sculptor of “The Gates of Paradise” at the Florence Baptistry). Doors painted inside and outside with figures of saints close the tabernacle or open to reveal the angels and the Madonna.

The originals from which the TMC angels were copied are less than eight inches high. Fra Angelico was extremely fond of angels playing musical instruments and used them often in his paintings, beau-tifully gowned and adorned with magnificent wings.

One of the unusual elements of these paintings is the impasto, or thickly molded areas. This technique is used to intensify parts of the painting by making them three-dimensional; here it is used to allow for better light reflection on the gilded areas of the wings, halos, and collars. Instead of gold-leaf gilding, the paintings seem to have a brilliant silver leaf over the impasto, over which an amber transparent glaze was applied, giving the illusion of gold. The impastos were probably applied like cake decorations, using tubes filled with a modeling compound and squeezed out, forming the various three-dimensional designs. The wings were probably applied with a large palette knife.

There was a lot of work for artist Langan. Often apprentices, under the supervision of the master painter, would work on or complete artwork. For example, hands or faces would be painted by one artist, garments by another, and the backgrounds by still another. The evidence of this is visible to a trained eye. This method seems to have been used in the completion of the Trinity Memorial angels.

The angels were restored by Robert L. Williams and were rededicated on Easter Day, March 31, 1982. When lightning struck the church on July 28, 1994, causing a three-alarm fire that destroyed the roof and much of the church interior, the angels, under a lower roof over the altar, were not severely damaged and were cleaned and restored as part of the church rebuilding.

by Robert L. Williams, Restorer and Katharine Kriebel.