Guardian Angel with a boy praying statue

The Guardian Angel devotion has its scriptural roots in Psalm 91 — "He shall give his angels charge over thee" — and in Matthew 18, where Christ speaks of the angels of little ones who always see the face of the Father. The pairing of a praying child with a watching angel emerged as a distinct subject in the seventeenth century, was canonised in Catholic devotion by the addition of a feast day for the Holy Guardian Angels under Pope Paul V, and reached its most familiar visual form in the popular prints of the nineteenth century.