 Unlike Youth and Pleasure , the critical response to The Destroying Angel was generally favourable even from those critics usually hostile to Etty . The painting generated favourable comparisons to Michelangelo and Rubens , and Etty 's early supporter William Carey ( writing under the name of " Ridolfi " ) considered it to be evidence of Etty 's " redeeming grace and spirit " . The painting was explicitly seen as a renunciation by Etty of his previous nude studies , with Fraser 's Magazine described it as " a sermon to [ Etty 's ] admirers ... where he inflicts poetical justice upon his own gay dames and their gallants , their revels being broken in upon , and they themselves being carried off most unceremoniously , like that little gentleman Don Juan , by sundry grim @-@ looking brawny devils " . 
