Angel with Lute: Celestial Controversies

Messengers of heaven, guardians of the innocent, comforters of the downtrodden — through the centuries, angels have fascinated mankind. As a result, they have been the subject of countless works of art, books, movies, and television programs.

And occasionally, angels have appeared on U.S. postage stamps, although not always accompanied by the peace customary to these celestial beings. Just ask Terry McCaffrey, manager of Stamp Development and art director for this year’s Angel with Lute stamp.

In 1994, while on vacation, McCaffrey saw a postcard featuring two child angels lifted from Raphael’s Renaissance masterpiece Sistine Madonna. “I thought they would make perfect Love stamps,” McCaffrey recalls, so he bought the card and stuck it in his suitcase — beginning what is now a thick file of cherub and seraph images.

McCaffrey’s idea, and the mock-ups created from the postcard images, were enthusiastically approved by the design team as well as by most of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC).

However, not everyone was so enthusiastic. C. Douglas Lewis, a curator at the National Gallery of Art and vice chairman of CSAC at the time, cautioned that the child angels — known as “putti” — were associated with mortal death, not love. In fact, some art historians believe that Sistine Madonna may have been intended for the funeral of Pope Julius II and that the putti are resting on top of a coffin.

Although other experts disagree with this interpretation, media coverage of the stamps created enough controversy to generate complaints — including from people who had already purchased them. “We even got a call from a mother of the bride,” McCaffrey recalls, “saying that we had jinxed her daughter’s wedding with the death-angel stamps.”

Nonetheless, the 1995 Love stamps were enormously popular — so much so that new Love stamps were not issued until 1997.

But Raphael’s putti weren’t the only angels making news that year. The 1995 Midnight Angel stamp created a furor as well.

Since 1970, the Postal Service had customarily issued both a Christmas traditional (religious) and a Christmas contemporary (secular) stamp. In the traditional category, all but three had been of a Madonna and Child or a nativity scene, and CSAC felt that the designs were starting to look repetitive.

So the decision was made to issue Midnight Angel as the Christmas traditional stamp. The image was based on an antique greeting card from the Edwardian era and was very different in flavor from the long line of Madonna and Child stamps that had preceded it — exactly as CSAC intended.

But when the 1995 stamp program was unveiled, sans Madonna and Child, a hue and cry arose. McCaffrey remembers it this way: “There was a front-page story in The Washington Post stating that the Postal Service had removed Christ from Christmas.”

And there was even a message from a higher authority. McCaffrey continues, “We received a call from the White House suggesting that it might be a good idea for us to issue a Madonna and Child stamp.”

So the Postal Service quickly produced the 1995 Madonna and Child by Giotto in addition to Midnight Angel.

But once again, McCaffrey’s faith in angels was confirmed: The public favored Midnight Angel by a large margin.

This year’s striking Angel with Lute stamp features a detail of a fragment from a circa 1480 fresco by Melozzo da Forlí. Although few of Melozzo’s works have survived, his depictions of musical angels have enjoyed newfound popularity. And since the equally lovely Madonna and Sleeping Child is also available, perhaps the issuance of this stamp will be as peaceful as the angel it depicts.