Air Crash

If artist Ricardo Bellver’s famed “Fallen Angel” statue depicting Lucifer’s fall from grace is too somber an experience, you can always cleanse your palate with the madcap angel who has just landed face-first on the roof of a five-story building in Madrid.

Not far from the Fallen Angel of Parque del Buen Retiro, is a far less graceful interpretation of a fall from Heaven. Sculptor Miguel Ángel Ruiz Beato’s “Air Crash” takes the falling part quite literally.

The sculpture of an angel mid-crash isn’t meant to depict Lucifer though, just a winged man who, according to Beato, went for a long walk and flew home with his back to the ground, sunbathing. While he was gone a city had been erected on the bare meadow where he usually landed.

The bronze angel crash-landed in January 2005. Most locals and tourists are unaware of Beato’s narrative for the 600-pound angel. There are, however, a few prevailing theories of just who it’s supposed to be: Lucifer, Icarus, or even Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song Angel.