Lucifer, The Fallen

In the city of Madrid, in Retiro Park, the largest park of the city, there is a statue of Lucifer that was created by the artist Ricardo Bellver.

Bellver created the statue of Lucifer in 1877. He named this creation, “The Fallen Angel (El Ángel Caído)”. This statue is said to be the only [public] work of art in the world to be ‘dedicated wholly’ to Lucifer. It was such a wonderful creation, that Ricardo Bellver had won the First Medal at the Spanish National Fine Arts Exhibition in 1878, and afterward it was placed in Retiro Park, in a fountain.

The Fall Of Lucifer
The Fallen Angel statue represented a passage in the poetry of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Paradise lost was inspired by the earlier Vondel’s Lucifer. These were works of epic religious drama inspired by the classic poets, like Virgil. It was, of course, a dramatic struggle between good and evil that entertained the idea of the ‘fall of Lucifer’, and the fall of Man, to a Christian audience.

In this statue, we can see that Lucifer is falling against the rocks, towards the earth. Wrapped around his legs is the serpent, a symbol of Satan in Christian myth. The serpent was the original cause of the ‘fall of man’, according to christian theology, and through this the gods of man [such as Lucifer] had fallen too, in the age of Christianity. There is a look of horror on his face, as if he were witnessing the ‘wrath of god’. This statue also symbolizes an important concept, that Satan and Lucifer are forever entwined together.

When Lucifer declared to god, “Non Serviam!” [paradise lost] it was his own assertion of power and for this he was ‘cast’ to the earth along with all of the other demons, devils and gods into Pandemonium, the land beneath the earth, otherwise known as hell. From this he gathered his armies and with Satan and Belial at his side he declared independence for all who would follow his example.

“Non Serviam!”
~I Will Not Serve~