In its early days, Christianity developed close links between death and the action of dancing. For example, in the 4th century, the devotees performed dances on the tombs of martyrs, they celebrated their death, since their death signified their rebirth in heaven. In everyday life, during the vigil for a dead person, people danced around the coffin with two objectives to fulfill: to please the soul of the deceased and to counteract the evil power of death.

The association between dance and death was not a Christian creation, but was inherited from past cultures that had also added dance to their funeral rites. The ancestral link between dance and death, made the action of dancing extend to the story of life after death. In other words, in heaven the angels, the saints, and the blessed also had to dance (Manasse 1946: 86).  Among the first testimonies in the Christian sphere, an inscription found in the Basilica of Saint Agnes Outside the Walls of Rome (IV-VII century) exclaims that the titular martyr will dance in a circle with the saints, in the beautiful pastures of Paradise. Centuries later, the painter Fra Angelico (1395-1455) bequeathed us three works where we find this celestial dance represented. In The Last Judgment (1432-1435; San Marco Museum in Florence), the painter represented the saved advancing towards Paradise guided by angels. A path that they carry out by dancing hand in hand in an open carole, just as the blessed souls did in Dante Alighieri's Paradise (1265-1321). We rediscover a similar composition in the Last Judgment (1447) in the Berlin Pinakothek, where the painter once again represented the saved dancing hand in hand in an open carole while the angels guide them to Paradise. Furthermore, in the Coronation of the Virgin Mary of the Uffizi in Florence (1434-1435), Fra Angelico chose to surround the moment with an aerial dance in a circle starring six angels. The other angels present in the painting play musical instruments, and it is possible to distinguish various types of trumpets, a lute, a violin, a portable organ and what can be a drum. Saints witness this celebration.

Giovanni di Paolo (1398-1482) in order to represent a celestial dance, also opted for an open carole. In the Five Dancing Angels (c.1436) from the Condé Museum in the Château de Chantilly, the protagonists dance together around the sun. Two of them, those at each end, also play a musical instrument, a trumpet and what looks like a lute respectively. The panel was part of a larger composition, which is surely missing the Virgin Mary with Child. The 19th century restoration replaced the remaining evidence of this central figure with a golden background and the sun in the center.

In this way, the heavenly dance par excellence was the carole. In the early Church, dance was a way of proclaiming and imitating the harmony of the world (Spitzer 1963: 31). Therefore, the only dance that could reflect the astral movement, the rotation of the firmament and the harmony of the planets was the circular one. The carole, as a circle dance, is now also iconographically derived in open chain. The angelic ring model was eventually consolidated in the aerial machinery designed by the Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and intended for the representation of the Annunciation in the church of San Felice in Florence (c. 1439). While eight angels caroused in the air, the archangel Gabriel descended between them to finish before the image of the Virgin Mary. On this angelic dome rested another choir of angels. It is a model of success that ended up being prolonged in time, when the round dance became the characteristic figurative representation of the paradisiacal beatitude. However, when the carole became a metonymy of theatrical art and scenic game, it was also rejected by the Church.

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