The Wounded Angel

During a period of emotional crisis following a serious illness in 1903, Simberg cultivated the themes of death and eternal life, which characterized his later works. Immediately after his illness, he painted the large canvas Wounded Angel (1903; Ateneumin Taidemuseo, Helsinki), which depicts a blindfolded young angel being carried on a stretcher by two grim-faced boys through a bleak landscape. In a more realistic figure style than he had used in his earlier work, Simberg here meditated on the theme of the expulsion from Paradise. He later re-used the subject in his cathedral murals in Tampere.