Angels in art  Angels have appeared in works of art since early Christian art, and they have been a popular subject for Byzantine and European paintings and sculpture. Angels are usually intended, in both Christian and Islamic art, to be beautiful, though several depictions go for more awesome or frightening attributes, notably in the depiction of the living creatures (which have bestial characteristics), ophanim (which are unanthropomorphic wheels) and cherubim (which have mosaic features); As a matter of theology, they are spiritual beings who do not eat or excrete and are genderless. Many angels in art may appear to the modern eye to be gendered as either male or female by their dress or actions, but until the 19th century, even the most female looking will normally lack breasts, and the figures should normally be considered as genderless. In 19th-century art, especially funerary art, this traditional convention is sometimes abandoned. Specific ideas regarding how to portray angels began to develop in the early Church. Since angels are defined as pure spirits,  the lack of a defined form has allowed artists wide latitude for creativity. Daniel 8:15 describes Gabriel as appearing in the "likeness of man" and in Daniel 9:21 he is referred to as "the man Gabriel." Such anthropomorphic descriptions of an angel are consistent with previous descriptions of angels, as in Genesis 19:5. They were usually depicted in the form of young men. The earliest known Christian image of an angel, in the "Cubicolo dell'Annunziazione" in the Catacomb of Priscilla, which is dated to the middle of the third century, is a depiction of the Annunciation in which Gabriel is portrayed without wings. Representations of angels on sarcophagi and on objects such as lamps and reliquaries of that period also show them without wings, as for example the angel in the "Sacrifice of Isaac" scene in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. In a third-century fresco of the Hebrew children in the furnace, in the cemetery of St. Priscilla, a dove takes the place of the angel, while a fourth-century representation of the same subject, in the coemeterium majus, substitutes the Hand of God for the heavenly messenger. The earliest known representation of angels with wings is on what is called the Prince's Sarcophagus, discovered at Sarigüzel, near Istanbul, in the 1930s, and attributed to the time of Theodosius I (379-395).