Angels and Demons – The Movie Prop

The statue in this photograph is not a Roman monument. It is a prop, a piece of sculpted set dressing made for Angels & Demons, Ron Howard's 2009 film of Dan Brown's thriller, and it was photographed in Piazza del Popolo, where the production filmed exteriors in June 2008. Behind it rise the bell tower and dome of one of the square's twin churches. Nothing like it stands in the piazza today; if you are looking for the "Angels and Demons statue" in Rome, you are probably looking for one of the real Bernini sculptures the story uses, described below.

What you're looking at

At first glance the figure belongs to the family of Bernini's angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo: a winged youth in deeply cut, wind-whipped drapery, one arm across his body. Look again and it has been subverted. The face is a leering, pointed-eared mask with small horns curling from the hair. The drapery falls open at the chest to show not flesh but an exposed ribcage, as if the angel were partly flayed. The right hand, held at the breast, makes a delicate, almost mannered gesture, while the left, at waist height, grips something wrapped in cloth.

The design is a clever piece of film craft. It borrows the vocabulary of Roman Baroque sculpture, the pale travertine-like surface, the drill-cut curls, the sweep of feathers, so that it reads instantly as "old Rome," then twists it into the film's theme: the angelic and the demonic sharing one body. The weathered gray finish, with darker grime in the folds, imitates centuries of exposure.

The real statues behind the story

In Dan Brown's novel and the film, the Illuminati's "Path of Illumination" runs through four altars of science (Earth, Air, Fire and Water), each marked by a work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini:

• Earth: Habakkuk and the Angel (1655–61), in the Chigi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo, on Piazza del Popolo. The angel points, and in the story that pointing finger sends Robert Langdon to the next altar. This is the statue most people mean by "the Angels and Demons statue in Piazza del Popolo."
• Air: the West Ponente relief in St. Peter's Square, one of the oval reliefs of the winds set into the pavement.
• Fire: the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647–52), in the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria, where an angel aims a golden arrow at the swooning saint (see Ecstasy of Saint Teresa).
• Water: the Fountain of the Four Rivers (1648–51) in Piazza Navona.

The Bernini connections are fiction layered on fact. The sculptures are real and the attributions are correct, but there is no evidence of an Illuminati trail, and Bernini was a devout Catholic in papal service rather than a secret society member.

How the film was made

Filming began in Rome on June 4, 2008, under the working title Obelisk. Church authorities, displeased by The Da Vinci Code, refused permission to film inside churches, so interiors were rebuilt at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. The production recreated the Chigi Chapel and Santa Maria della Vittoria on soundstages, and built St. Peter's Square and Piazza Navona on the backlot. For the exterior of Santa Maria del Popolo, the crew used a building across the square and covered it in scaffolding, which also explained the "restoration" mentioned in the plot.

Props such as this statue were part of that effort to dress real Roman locations and studio sets so they could cut together seamlessly. Its maker is not credited in any source we could find.

Why the image resonates

Like a gargoyle, the figure works because it combines the beautiful and the grotesque. It also captures the tension at the heart of the film, the struggle between faith and reason, sanctity and corruption, in a form that looks like it has always been part of the city. For genuine historical images of the same theme, see Angels & Demons in Art, The Fall of the Rebel Angels and Bernini's The Vision of Constantine.

Where to see the real thing

Habakkuk and the Angel is in Santa Maria del Popolo, Piazza del Popolo, Rome, where the same chapel also holds Bernini's Daniel and the Lion. The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa is in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Via XX Settembre. Both churches are free to enter outside service times. The prop statue itself is not on public display.