Speak of the Devil

Taking as many guises as his names, the Prince of Lies turned at times into a man-devouring ogre, a mutant medley of claws, horns and wings, or the brooding rebel that lit the imagination of Romantic painters

- CARLA PASSINO

HALOED in darkness, naked but for a sheer gauze across his loins, Satan stands fierce on the edge of a flaming sea and raises his arms, muscles rippling under the weight of his staff, to call his legions. 'Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!'

With only his glowering eyes and the snake circling his helm marking him as the Devil, Sir Thomas Lawrence's handsome antihero is a far cry from the be-tailed monsters that boiled fallen souls in the 12th-century mural at Chaldon Church, Surrey.

Vigorous or deformed, fearsome, humbled or desperate, the Devil has been shapeshifting since he made his artistic debut in late Antiquity, taking on as many forms as his names—Satan is the adversary, Lucifer the fallen angel—or, indeed, the religions for which he was the bogeyman (Islam alone has a bevy of devils, led by Iblis, also called Ash-Shaytan). One of its earliest appearances in a Christian context, according to Italian art historian Laura Pasquini's 2024 book on diabolic iconography (Il Diavolo. Storia Iconografica del male), is a profile on the mosaic of the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta in the town of Aquileia, Italy. It was made in the 4th century, at a time when the Church was debating whether images had a place in worship or were perilous relics of paganism. With one eye staring fixedly from a tile, forehead frowning under a single, untamed curl and tongue protruding from his mouth, the Devil's image is reminiscent of the evil-warding masks used in Bacchic and other early rituals—there to warn the faithful of the dangers of embracing the very rites from which it drew its shape.