The Fountain of the Fallen Angel is a statue of the devil in Madrid – the world’s first and oldest. Its twisted expression of wounded pride, however, makes it anything but a tribute.
Ricardo Bellver produced the original Fuente Del Ángel Caído, or statue of the Fallen Angel, in plaster in 1877. In 1878, it won its creator a Medalla de Primera Clase at Madrid’s National Exhibition of Fine Arts. A bronze cast appeared at the Universal Exhibition in Paris the same year. The same bronze cast now sits atop the fountain in El Retiro park.
There was sympathy for the devil among high society. But news in 1885 that the piece was to find a permanent home in El Retiro park was met with public outcry. Residents didn’t want a statue of the devil in Madrid. Against their protests, architect Francisco Jareño y Alarcón created the eight-sided pedestal and the demons at its base. The Fountain of the Fallen Angel was inaugurated on 23 October 1885.
Here’s a curious coincidence. In 1885, there were no instruments able to accurately measure height relative to sea level. Yet the Fountain of the Fallen Angel happens to stand 666 metres above sea level.
Today, its status as the only public monument to the devil is contested. But it is doubtless the oldest.
John Milton’s influence on Madrid’s statue of the devil
Sculptor Bellver drew much inspiration for his original piece from the work of John Milton.
In his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton tells the story of the fall of the angel Lucifer and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The presence in the Fountain of the Fallen Angel of the serpent draws a clear enough connection. But during its exhibition in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, a catalogue also quoted this passage from Paradise Lost:
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d
The Mother of Mankinde, what time his Pride
Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal’d the most High,
If he oppos’d, and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
With vain attempt.
But the scene also reminds me of an important work of gothic literature. It’s set in Madrid and, for all we know, Bellver may have read it. In the closing pages of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, the proud holy man Ambrosio has escaped his presumed execution by making a deal with the devil. The exchange, inevitably, does not work out in his favour:
The Caves and mountains rang with Ambrosio’s shrieks. The Daemon continued to soar aloft, till reaching a dreadful height, He released the sufferer.
The monk plumets into a valley, where insects will feast on his flesh. As he waits for death, there’s nothing left for him to do but ponder his sins. On a cool morning in El Retiro park, with rollerbladers gliding past and dogs chasing balls, it’s easy to ignore my own.
If you’re in the area, the Black Paintings of Francisco de Goya in Museo del Prado depict scenes no less tormented. And if you’re in the mood, San Juan de los Reyes Monastery stands in Toledo like another scene out of Matthew Lewis’s gothic novel.