ANGELS AS THE MANUS DEI: EVIDENCE IN ART AND ANGELOLOGY.

There is no consensus in art history about the reasons for the association of Archangel Michael with the Weighing of Souls or Psychostasis in Christian art, and the paper examines Karl Künstle's theory that the figure of the angel replaced the Manus Domini, the Hand of God. Tracing the process of transformation through examples that were not provided by Künstle, it argues for a coexistence of the angel and the Manus Dei in the same role, with the angel eventually taking precedence perhaps due to the increased diffusion of Saint Michael's cult. Through the analysis of Vincenzo Cicogna's Angelorum et daemonum nomina et attributa... the paper demonstrates that the understanding of the angel as the Manus Dei in medieval and Early Modern art was supported by contemporaneous theories in angelology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]