The Wounded Angel

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The Wounded Angel
Hugo Simberg, 1903
Oil, 127 × 154 cm
Helsinki, Ateneum

The Wounded Angel (Finnish: Haavoittunut enkeli) (1903) is a painting by Finnish symbolist painter Hugo Simberg. It is one of the most recognizable of Simberg's works, and was voted as Finland's "national painting" in a vote held by the Ateneum art museum in 2006.^[1]

Like other Simberg paintings, The Wounded Angel evokes a serious, even gloomy atmosphere. The central figure of the angel has a bandage around her eyes and traces of blood on her wing. The two young bearers are dressed in somber colours, as if in mourning, and the one in the right stares directly out of the painting at the viewer with a serious expression, only made more so by the youth of the two boys.

Simberg consistently declined to offer any explanations to the meaning behind his paintings. Instead, he felt it was important that the viewer was left free to make their own conclusions based on the symbolism. It is known that Simberg had been suffering from meningitis, and that the idea for the painting came to him at that time and that it was a source of strength during his recovery.^[2]

When Simberg was tasked to paint the frescoes to the Tampere Cathedral in 1905 and 1906, one of them was a larger version of The Wounded Angel, which he had always considered his favorite painting.^[2]

The painting's ubiquity in Finnish culture has resulted in some derivative works, such as the 2007 music video for the Nightwish song "Amaranth."^[3]