St Michael overcoming Satan (1875)

St Michael overcoming Satan was sculpted by John Wood between 1872 and 1875 from a block of Carrera marble. It was initially displayed at London’s Royal Academy until coming ‘home’ to Warrington from where Wood hailed and whose townsfolk had contributed the one thousand pounds for its commissioning.

The info board attributes the depicted fight to Milton, but it surely alludes to Revelation 12:7:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels…

-an event to which the Lord Jesus may refer in Luke 10:18:

And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

Michael here is rather expressionless; he cuts Satan down with as much emotion as if he were chopping a cabbage or composing a shopping list. Satan, on the other hand, is most distressed; for either being expelled from paradise or exiled from the spiritual realm ahead of his final comeuppance, an acute dread overshadows his expression, top. Michael is merely executing God’s judgement; he may derive little pleasure from chastising and exiling a fellow angel, while the recipient of that exclusion well knows his terrifying, longer-term prospects.

We Christians do not really know what to do at Halloween. Do we summon teams of intercessors and oppose the darkness, yelling choruses into heavenly places, or do we ride it out and let a godless world play its daft games, paying tribute to beings it little understands? I wonder if Michael’s sculpted expression offers the best advice, implicit though it is. Despite battling the evillest being in the cosmos, his face is neutral, his emotions nonchalant. Evil will have its spree, but a better time is coming; Satan will have his season, but it cannot, and will not last.

The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Revelation 20:10