John Angel, Sculptor (1881 – 1960), created various works at the Cathedral from the mid 1920’s through the decade of the 1930’s. He was a British-born architectural and ecclesiastical sculptor. At the age of 14, he entered a 5 year apprenticeship with an English firm specializing in ecclesiastical carvings and restoration. He received formal training at the Exeter School of Art, the Lambeth School of Art and the Royal Academy School. The Royal Society of British Sculptors elected Angel to membership in 1919 when he was 30 years old.
In 1925, he brought his family to the United States. The architect Ralph Adams Cram had invited him. Cram would write later…
“John Angel had come to America for a visit, and we had induced him, rather against his will I fancy, to do for us…Out of the blue, so to speak, had fallen upon us the very sculptor we had dreamed of but hardly dared hope for.”
-Ralph Adams Cram
The Bapistry
His earliest work, may well have been on the Stuyvesant Bapistry which Cram & Ferguson designed. There are 8 statues in a frieze high up around the octagonal room. John Angel modeled these statues. Eduardo Ardolino was possibly the carver of these pieces. Ardolino was an Italian-born American stone carver and architectural sculptor. There are 6 prominent Dutch figures and two English figures that taken together form a history of the Netherlands including Peter Stuyvesant the Governor General of New Netherlands. Construction on the Bapistry began in 1924 with the consecration held on Easter Sunday 1929. The Stuyvesant family heirs funded it. From then on Angel became a vital part of Cram’s organization. He was at once assigned all the sculpture for the two tower portals of the west front of the Cathedral.
The Trumeau of the Main Portal
The trumeau, or center post of the Portal of Paradise is the statue of St. John. The namesake of the Cathedral is front and center at the main entrance. It is 8 1/2 feet tall and was dedicated in 1935. Below the figure of St. John is a unique pedestal featuring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Angel’s method involved sculpting a small model in clay, then enlarging it to full size in clay. A plaster cast was then created. At this point it was handed over to the stone carver with Angel putting finishing touches on the piece. Contrast this method to the work of Simon Verity, some 40 years later. Verity’s jamb statues and pedestals on either side of the Angel piece were done by the direct carving method. Verity was assisted by Jean Claude Marchionni, and carvers from the Stoneyard Institute at the Cathedral.
The North Portal – The Martyr’s Portal
The sculptor John Angel’s largest work at the Cathedral was the grouping of statues at the North Portal. The trumeau is of St. Peter pictured below.
The jamb statues are as follows; they are 8 feet tall.
It is likely that the carving of the full size models for the North Tower Portal were done by the Piccirilli Brothers of Brooklyn. Seeing these images, we are longing for a Tom Fedorek guide to the liturgical symbolism of all these carving.
John Angel, Sculptor – Archival Footage
Cathedral and Diocesan Archivist, Wayne Kempton has made available on YouTube, digital copies of 16mm movie footage of Angel creating the full size clay model.
In this video we see John Angel completing the head of Joan of Arc, the detail of a pedestal from beginning to end, construction of an armature, working on St. Vincent, use of a pointing machine to enlarge from a smaller model, finishing Thomas a Becket. Click HERE to view video
Two additional digitized films of Angel’s work, modeling the carvings of the North Tower Portal will be in a future post.
John Angel was held to be one of America’s foremost sculptors. Many thought him unrivaled and compared him to the finest sculptors of the Middle Ages.
It is said his style preserves the principals of Medieval art with a quality of contemporaneousness, a modern quality that makes it not archaeology but living art.
Angel’s honors nationally and internationally were numerous. His work incudes the Exeter War Memorial in the UK and the Founders Memorial at Rice University. Many of his ecclesiastical works dot the country through his association with Ralph Adams Cram. The six bronze doors at St. Patrick’s Cathedral were also Angel’s.
Of his own work, Angel described the style as mostly ersatz 13th Century Gothic. Ever self-deprecating, he said “I never went to school; I’m an ignoramus.”
- Cram, Ralph Adams (1936), My Life in Architecture
- Time Magazine, June 2, 1947, Art: Gothic with a Difference
- Wayne Kempton, Cathedral Archives, John Angel Film
- A Guide to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in the City of New York, Hall, 1928
- Remarks by Dr. Ralph Adams Cram at the unveiling of Mr. John Angel’s statue of the Founder, June 8, 1930, Rice University
One reply on “John Angel, Sculptor”
Roger,
I don’t know if you’ve gotten my past comments, so forgive me if I’m being redundant.
I wrote a while back to say I was employed at St. John from 1990-92. I am currently a full time fine-art sculptor. My Grandfather, Leopold de Christopher (de Christofaro) was a stonecutter from Italy who ended up in Philadelphia. He was from the same town as Eduardo Ardolino, Torre le Nocelle. It turns out I am cousins with Eduardo.