Uriel

An archangel wrestles a dragon wearing the symbol of the Higgs boson — the sacred and the scientific, locked together.

Uriel is a mural created by artist Neve in 2012 in Carugate, Milan.

"Uriel" depicts the archangel of the same name in the act of wrestling a red dragon-serpent — gripping it, struggling with it, neither releasing it nor being consumed by it. The dragon wears a collar bearing the symbol of the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle confirmed by CERN in July of that same year: the so-called "God particle", the fundamental force that gives matter its mass. The collision of the sacred and the scientific is deliberate. Uriel — the archangel of fire and wisdom in Jewish and Christian tradition — is here not merely fighting a mythological beast, but grappling with a force of nature itself: the invisible mechanism that holds the physical world together. The dragon is not evil. It is power, unnamed and unchained. The mural fills an entire building facade in Carugate, with Uriel's vast white wings spreading across the roofline and the storm sky behind him. The architecture becomes part of the composition — the windows embedded in the body of the work, the building itself transformed into the site of the struggle.