Le génie du mal (or The Genius of Evil or The Spirit of Evil), known informally in English as Lucifer or The Lucifer of Liège is a religious sculpture executed in white marble and installed in 1848 by the Belgian artist Guillaume Geefs. Francophone art historians often refer to the figure as an ange déchu, a “fallen angel”.
The sculpture is located in the elaborate pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Liège, and depicts a classically attractive man chained, seated, and nearly nude but for drapery gathered over his thighs, his full length ensconced within a mandorla of bat wings. Geefs’ work replaces an earlier sculpture created for the space by his younger brother Joseph Geefs, L’ange du mal, which was removed from the cathedral because of its distracting allure and “unhealthy beauty”.
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