Carlo Crivelli, 'Saint Michael', about 1476

This panel was once part of an altarpiece painted by Crivelli for a side chapel in the church of San Domenico in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. Michael, the only saint who is also an angel, is shown as a youthful prince, his sword raised with nonchalant ease to strike at the Devil who writhes beneath his feet.

He pinches a ring delicately in his left hand; from it hang the scales in which he weighs the naked souls at the last judgement. At once refined and ferocious, Michael’s pale aristocratic beauty and glittering armour make a vivid contrast to the scaly skin, furred legs and vicious talons of the demon below him.

The account of the war in heaven between Michael and his angels and the devil – in the form of a dragon – comes in Revelation 12:7–12. In medieval Italian art, Michael is usually shown fighting a dragon. In Northern European art, however, Michael often tramples a wriggling, recumbent demon; Crivelli might have come across such an image through the relatively new medium of engraved prints.

Michael’s feet rest firmly on the shoulders of his fallen enemy, who claws at his legs and struggles to reach the scales to drag the souls down to hell – he has even put a weight on one side to help tip the balance in his favour. Demon and angel gaze at each other, engrossed in eternal combat. Showing off his talent for foreshortening, Crivelli shows us the top of Michael’s golden head, with its silver coronet and green feather, his face almost hidden as he gazes down. Satan’s head – with its furred ears, fangs and curling pink tongue – is also seen from above, and casts a shadow over the edge of the marble pavement. His bat wings are a ghastly echo of Michael’s glorious feathers – a reminder that Satan too was once an angel. Much of the composition’s energy comes from the constraints placed upon the combatants by the frame: they seem to have been crammed into a space too small to contain them. Comparison with a roughly contemporary depiction of the same subject, Saint Michael triumphant over the Devil with the Donor Antonio Juan, shows how Crivelli has compressed the figures into the available space.

As prince of the archangels and commander of the heavenly host, Michael was a favourite saint of medieval aristocrats, whose main role was to lead troops in battle. Here he is resplendent in a mix of Roman and contemporary armour. Over a chain mail tunic he wears a tunic of pink and green feathers: this is the armour of an angel, not a man. His gold breastplate has gilded feathers and pearls modelled in pastiglia along its lower edge. The front is patterned with scrolling oak leaves and decorated with a classical pastiglia cherub’s head, clusters of pearls – a symbol of angelic purity – and swags of laurel. A pink cloak lined with green and trimmed with gold flutters from his shoulders, echoing the colours of his wings, folded behind him out of the way of his sword. At his knees are lion-masks poleyns (knee protectors) one side cast in deep shadow, the other gazing directly out at us. His toes are bare, protruding from classical puttees (strips of cloth) which wrap around his lower legs.

Michael had a special meaning for the people of eastern Italy. The oldest shrine in Western Europe dedicated to Saint Michael was at Gargano, in Apulia. Monte Sant'Angelo was a major centre of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages, and still very popular in the fifteenth-century Marche. It was also a favourite point of departure for both pilgrims to Jerusalem and crusaders, who could pray to the great warrior angel before setting out for the East.