AtD translation: picked up a minor angel

[Mark Kohut]

A 'minor angel' is from Rilke's mythology...

On Wed, May 13, 2026 at 10:55 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> P725.20-29   UP HERE IN NORTH ITALY, as in France one might buy ordinary
> village wine hoping to find a few cases of overrun from a great vineyard
> nearby, Vibe’s theory was to buy all the school-of-Squarciones he could put
> his hands on in the hopes that someplace in there might be an unattributed
> Mantegna somebody had overlooked. It was the current fashion to disrespect
> the painting skills of the famed Paduan collector and impresario himself,
> so any actual Squarciones kicking around, including embroideries and
> tapestries (for he had begun his working life as a tailor), would be going
> for a song. In fact, Scarsdale had already picked up a minor angel just by
> singing “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away” to a sacristan who might
> have been insane.
>
> What does "a minor angel" refer to here exactly?
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