Who Wounded the Angel? | Hugo Simberg | KROMOS EP016

Two boys are carrying a wounded angel through a strangely quiet landscape. Where are they taking her? Who caused her injuries? And why did the artist refuse to explain the scene? Hugo Simberg painted The Wounded Angel in 1903, but began planning the image years earlier. KROMOS follows the clues he left behind: original sketches, photographs of his models, the real landscape around Töölönlahti in Helsinki, and the return of this mysterious procession in Tampere Cathedral. The painting may never give us a final answer. But it changes the question we ask. CHAPTERS 00:00 The Question 00:59 The Strange Procession 02:05 The Two Boys 03:10 A Real Place in Helsinki 04:29 The Evidence Left Behind 05:52 Hugo Simberg's World 07:01 The Painting Without a Name 08:02 The Angel Returns 08:53 The Gaze ARTWORK AND SOURCE CREDITS The Wounded Angel (1903), Hugo Simberg. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum; original painting CC0. Preparatory studies (1902) and related holdings: Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum, CC0. Photograph of a boy posing in Simberg's studio (1902): Hugo Simberg; digital reproduction Finnish National Gallery / Public Domain Image Archive, CC BY 2.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... The Garden of Death (1896), Hugo Simberg: public-domain reproduction. Self-Portrait (1914), Hugo Simberg: public-domain reproduction. The Wounded Angel (Tampere Cathedral fresco, 1905–1906): public-domain reproduction. Additional historical study and painting-in-progress images: public-domain reproductions; details documented in the KROMOS image credits archive. Finnish National Gallery: https://www.kansallisgalleria.fi/en Original oil painting: https://www.finna.fi/Record/kansallis... Preparatory sketches: https://kokoelma.kansallisgalleria.fi... Simberg studio model: https://kokoelma.kansallisgalleria.fi... Narration: Benjamin, synthetic speech produced with ElevenLabs. Documentary editing and research: KROMOS. KROMOS. More than meets the eye. #HugoSimberg #TheWoundedAngel #ArtHistory