Editing Angels in art (section)

===Byzantine art===
[[File:Erzengel Michael und Gabriel.jpg|thumb|upright|12th-century [[icon]] of the Archangels [[Michael (angel)|Michael]] and [[Gabriel]] wearing the ''[[loros]]'' of the Imperial guards.]]
Angels appear in Byzantine art in mosaics and icons. Artists found some of their inspiration from winged Greek figures such as "Victory". They also drew from imperial iconography. Court eunuchs could rise to positions of authority in the Empire. They performed ceremonial functions and served as trusted messengers. Amelia R. Brown points out that legislation under Justinian indicates that many of them came from the Caucasus, having light eyes, hair, and skin, as well as the "comely features and fine bodies" desired by slave traders.<ref name=brown/> Those "castrated in childhood developed a distinctive skeletal structure, lacked full masculine musculature, body hair and beards,...." As officials, they would wear a white tunic decorated with gold. Brown suggests that  "Byzantine artists drew, consciously or not, on this iconography of the court eunuch".<ref name=brown>{{cite web| url = https://www.academia.edu/1053017| title = Brown, Amelia R., 'Painting the Bodiless: Angels and Eunuchs in Byzantine Art and Culture', University of Queensland (2007)| access-date = 2 November 2017| archive-date = 12 November 2017| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171112141404/http://www.academia.edu/1053017/Painting_the_Bodiless_Angels_and_Eunuchs_in_Byzantine_Art_and_Culture| url-status = dead}}</ref>

Daniel 10: 5–6 describes an angel as clothed in linen and girt with gold.<ref name=longhurst/> Angels, especially the archangel Michael, who were depicted as military-style agents of God, came to be shown wearing [[Late Antique]] military uniform. This could be either the normal military dress, with a tunic to about the knees, armour breastplate and [[pteruges]], but also often the specific dress of the bodyguard of the [[Byzantine Emperor]], with a long tunic and the ''[[loros]]'', a long gold and jewelled [[pallium]] restricted to the Imperial family and their closest guards, and in icons to archangels. The basic military dress it is still worn in pictures into the [[Baroque]] period and beyond in the West, and up to the present day in [[Eastern Orthodox]] [[icon]]s. Other angels came to be conventionally depicted in long robes.