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335 KiB (Stored with Git LFS)
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The floral symbolism of the great
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masters, by Elizabeth Haig
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This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
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whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
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www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
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will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
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using this eBook.
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Title: The floral symbolism of the great masters
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Author: Elizabeth Haig
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Release Date: April 1, 2023 [eBook #70433]
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Language: English
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Produced by: Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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generously made available by The Internet Archive)
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLORAL SYMBOLISM OF THE
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GREAT MASTERS ***
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Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_. Boldface
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text is enclosed in =equals signs.= Small-caps text is shown in
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all-caps.
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[Illustration:
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_Lorenzo da Sanseverino_ _Photo Hanfstängl_
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THE VIRGIN IN A STRAWBERRY-DECORATED MANTLE
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Below are the Gourd and Apple, symbols of Resurrection and Death
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(National Gallery)
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_Frontispiece_]
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]
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THE
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FLORAL SYMBOLISM OF
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THE GREAT MASTERS
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BY
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ELIZABETH HAIG
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[Illustration]
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LONDON:
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KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
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BROADWAY HOUSE, 68–74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
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1913
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[Illustration: _The Divine Heart (19th Century--German)_]
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PREFACE
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This little book has been written for the pleasure of those amateurs
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who are more interested in the idea which inspires a picture than
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in the picture’s workmanship. Naturally, the more accomplished the
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artist, the more clearly and attractively is he able to set forth his
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meaning; but with art criticism this book has nothing to do, and the
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attributions are, for the most part, simply those of the official
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catalogues of the respective galleries.
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To explain completely even so small a branch of Christian symbolism as
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that of flowers, an exhaustive knowledge is required of the development
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of Christian theology, and of the varying force with which different
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doctrines appealed at different times to the public mind. But still,
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these notes may be of some interest to those who care to trace in the
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work sanctioned by the Church and reverenced by the people the history
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of Western idealism, and who are sometimes puzzled by the conventions
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employed by the Masters to illustrate the Divine Mysteries.
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CONTENTS
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CHAP. PAGE
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I. EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS 9
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II. THE FLOWER SYMBOLISTS 23
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III. THE LILY 41
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IV. THE IRIS 62
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V. THE ROSE 71
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VI. THE CARNATION 83
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VII. GARLANDS OF ROSES 88
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VIII. THE COLUMBINE 104
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IX. THE OLIVE 112
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X. THORNS 126
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XI. THE PALM 134
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XII. THE ACANTHUS 146
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XIII. THE FLEUR-DE-LYS 148
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XIV. THE LILY OF THE ANNUNCIATION 162
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XV. THE LILY OF THE ANGEL GABRIEL 177
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XVI. THE FLOWERS OF THE DIVINITY 191
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XVII. THE FLOWERS OF THE VIRGIN 197
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XVIII. THE LILY OF THE SAINTS 219
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XIX. THE VINE 235
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XX. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 240
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XXI. THE GOURD 257
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XXII. THE POMEGRANATE 261
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XXIII. THE STRAWBERRY 268
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XXIV. FRUIT IN GARLANDS 272
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PARADISE. GIOVANNI DI PAOLO 277
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THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN. H. VAN EYCK 279
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THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. H. VAN DER GOES 281
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LA PURISSIMA. MURILLO 283
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THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY, VIRGIN. D. G. ROSSETTI 285
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LIST OF AUTHORITIES 287
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INDEX OF ARTISTS 289
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INDEX OF FLOWERS 291
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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PLATE PAGE
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I. THE VIRGIN IN A STRAWBERRY-DECORATED MANTLE (_Lorenzo
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da San Severino_) _Frontispiece_
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II. THE BADGE OF THE ORDER OF THE LILY OF NAVARRE 41
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III. THE FLOWERS OF HEAVEN (_Mosaic of the 13th Century_) 41
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IV. THE ‘ENCLOSED GARDEN’ OF THE VIRGIN (_Stefano da Zevio_) 100
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V. GABRIEL, CROWNED WITH OLIVE, BRINGS THE MESSAGE OF
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RECONCILIATION (_Martin Schöngauer_) 123
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VI. THE CROWN OF THORNS (_Zurburan_) 128
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VII. THE ACANTHUS OF PARADISE (_Mosaic of the 13th Century_) 146
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VIII. THE ROSE OF DIVINE LOVE RISING FROM A PRECIOUS VESSEL
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(_Pinturicchio_) 169
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IX. THE ROYAL LILY SPRINGING FROM A HUMBLE VASE (_Pesello_) 169
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X. THE COLUMBINE OF THE SEVEN GIFTS (_Jörg Breu_) 188
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XI. SAINT BARBARA WITH THE ROYAL LILY (_The Master of
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Flémalle_) 188
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XII. THE FRUIT OF DAMNATION EXCHANGED FOR THE FRUIT OF
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REDEMPTION (_Hugo van der Goes_) 245
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XIII. THE FRUIT OF HEAVEN RELINQUISHED FOR THE APPLE OF
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EDEN (_Memling_) 245
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XIV. ADAM AND EVE DELIVERED FROM HELL (_Martin Schöngauer_) 248
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XV. THE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS
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WITH LILIES AND ROSE-GARLANDS (_Botticelli_) 262
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XVI. PARADISE (_Giovanni di Paolo_) 278
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XVII. THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN (_Hubert van Eyck_) 280
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XVIII. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS (_Hugo van der Goes_) 282
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XIX. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (_Murillo_) 284
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XX. THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY, VIRGIN (_Dante Gabriel Rossetti_) 286
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THE FLORAL SYMBOLISM OF THE GREAT MASTERS
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I
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EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS[1]
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Since the earliest days of Christianity the Church has made use of
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emblems. The Early Church used them partly protectively to conceal
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their faith from the pagans, and partly because it lacked artists
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capable of worthily depicting the Godhead in human form. Even when the
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days of persecution had passed, the Church, restrained by reverential
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tradition, by poverty perhaps, and perhaps by the Eastern fear of the
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‘graven image,’ continued to represent Christ as the True Vine and the
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Apostles as sheep or as doves.
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But at the beginning of the fourth century the Emperor Constantine
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established Christianity as the religion of the state. New, and often
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magnificent, churches were built in each town and the Emperor placed in
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the hands of the ecclesiastics a large portion of the royal revenues.
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In these grand new basilicas the simple decoration of the Catacombs
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and tiny ancient chapels was not sufficient. The ample walls offered
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a splendid field for the mosaicist and Byzantine taste demanded
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elaborate pictorial effects. Representations of the Redeemer appeared
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surrounded by the Apostles, the prophets and the four-and-twenty
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elders of Revelation. Saints and martyrs were introduced, and later
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we find imperial personages, Justinian surrounded by his guards and
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Theodora followed by the ladies of her court. It became necessary to
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distinguish the figures one from another and therefore symbolism was
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largely introduced. The Deity was placed within the _mandorla_, symbol
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of perfect blessedness. The prophets were awarded broken wheels to
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denote their imperfect revelation, and the apostles books, to signify
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their fuller knowledge. Haloes were carefully differentiated. Virgin
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saints carried palms or laurel crowns, and martyrs had the instruments
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of their martyrdom placed beside them. Some figures carried scrolls
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on which were inscribed texts which gave the clue to their identity,
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others simply had their names written above their heads, but both these
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latter devices were useless to the ignorant.
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At the Renaissance, when art had a fuller life and wider aims, it
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was not sufficient to thus merely label the persons represented. The
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traditions of Byzantine art once broken, the painter was free to set
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upon the panel all the beauty that his mind could conceive and that his
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hand could execute. He had no longer to paint a Christ or a Madonna
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correct to a formula, but none the less he was bound to depict figures
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which should be instantly recognizable as God incarnate and the meek
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Mother of Christ. So from his freedom sprang the problem which has
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occupied the religious painter ever since, the painting of a soul’s
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quality, the making visible to the world of the beauty of holiness.
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During the great century of art, achievement came. Raphael, Leonardo,
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Michael Angelo, Perugino required and used no symbol to express the
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majesty of Christ or the purity of the Virgin Mother. They had that
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power to make visible the intangible which, in art, is genius. But
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among the earlier artists of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
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he who was unable to show by the announcing angel’s attitude and
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mien that his message was one of peace and goodwill, placed a branch
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of olive in his hand, and he who despaired of adequately depicting
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the immaculate purity of the Virgin, emphasized his point by setting
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a pot of spotless lilies by her side. So was the intention of the
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least-accomplished of artists made clear, even to the unlettered.
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After the first effervescence of the Renaissance had died down, the
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laws of sacred art became once more fixed, though never again (except
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in Spain beneath the Inquisition) with the strictness of the Byzantine
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school. Art as a teacher of religion required to be as conservative
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as the Catholic Church with which it was allied, and the symbolism of
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the fourteenth century has remained with few additions or modifications
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to our own day. When devotional pictures multiplied, emblems passed
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into what may be termed the heraldry of the Church. Though also used in
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decoration, their primary use upon altar vessels and Church furniture
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was to distinguish the object as sacred, or as the property of the
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Church, in the same way as the royal arms or a private crest indicated
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the ownership of secular things. They appeared on the banners used in
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processions of the Church and on the badges and insignia of religious
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orders, but were very seldom used in pictorial art. Indeed, it is in
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the early Flemish school alone that pictures similar to the van Eycks’
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‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’[2] or to their ‘Fountain of Life’[3] are
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found, where angels, prophets, saints and patriarchs bow down before
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the emblem, not the figure, of the Saviour.
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During the first twelve centuries of Christianity the emblems and
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symbols of the Church were drawn from many sources; those that were
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introduced at the Renaissance were fruits and flowers. The Christ-Child
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holds the apple, symbol of the Fall, or a pomegranate showing the
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seeds, symbol of the Church. The lily typifies the spotless purity
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of the Virgin. Saint Dorothea is crowned with roses; Saint Joseph
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holds the flowering rod. There were, of course, other symbols used.
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Allegorical figures held the sword of justice or the scales of
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judgment; the mandorla, the halo, the orb of sovereignty and the
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book of knowledge survived from the Byzantine school; but those
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symbols which first appeared or came into fashion, as it were, at the
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Renaissance were fruits and flowers.
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It was not strange that it should be so. The new interest in the
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literature of ancient Greece and Rome had revived the old classical
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love of nature, of running brooks and leafy forests, and of all the
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fresh unspoiled things which shoot up clean and fragrant from the
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earth. Saint Francis with his ‘jesters of the Lord’ had gone singing
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through the vineyards praising God for the light of the sun, for the
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birds, for the grass. His song was taken up by the troubadours, who
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also sang of the fair things of the fields, though their _leit motif_
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was earthly, rather than heavenly, love.
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The minnesingers of Germany sang of roses, spring-tide, love and
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chivalry, and three of the sweetest-throated, Walther von der
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Vogelweide, Godfried von Strassburg and Conrad von Würtzburg, each
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before he died, composed a song in honour of the Virgin.
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In Provence the Lady Clémence Isaure instituted the _Jeux Floraux_, and
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for those who excelled in song there were three awards, a violet, an
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eglantine and a marigold, all wrought in gold. Later a silver lily was
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added as the prize for the best sonnet celebrating the perfections of
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the Virgin. The rules of this Mayday tournament of song proclaimed that
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‘these games are for the amusement of the people, for the honour of God
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as the giver of good gifts of trees and flowers, and to praise Him,
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because nature, which had been dead, now lives again.’
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The world was now beginning to see the value of these ‘good gifts.’
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Chaucer could find no higher emblem for the Virgin than a flower:
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‘And thou that art the floure of Virgins all;’
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while Dante, who, more than any other single writer, has influenced
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sacred art, uses the same imagery:
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‘Here is the Rose
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Wherein the Word Divine was made incarnate,
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And here the lilies, by whose order known
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The way of life was followed.’
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The Churchmen of the day caught the spirit of the Humanists, and there
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sprang up a school of symbolists who concerned themselves largely with
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plants, fruits and flowers. The writings of the early symbolists,
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Origen, Saint Melitus, Bishop of Sardes, Saint Jerome, Saint Ambrose,
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Walafrid Strabo and Raban Maur, Archbishop of Mayence, were re-studied
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and their allusions to the plant world noted. Durandus, Bishop of
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Mende, whose _Rationale_, published in 1295, is still considered the
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supreme authority on the spiritual significance of Church architecture
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and Church ornament, held flowers in general to be the emblems of
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goodness. ‘They represent, like the trees, those good works which
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have the virtues for roots.’ Growing things, he considered, could very
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beautifully supplement the ritual of the Church, and he recommends that
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‘on Palm Sunday the people should deck themselves with flowers, olive
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branches and palms, the flowers to signify the virtues of the Holy
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One, the olive branches His office as peace-bringer and the palms His
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victory over Satan.’
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There were those symbolists who, like Durandus of Mende and the
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Cardinal Petrus of Capua, valued the symbol entirely as a means of
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interpreting the doctrines of the Church. Their definition was that of
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Hugues de Saint-Victor: ‘The symbol is the allegorical representation
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of a Christian principle under a material form’; and they simply
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searched for those objects which best suited their purpose. Then
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there were those symbolists who, like Saint Hildegarde, Abbess of
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Rupertsburg, mixed their symbolism strangely with herbalism and magic.
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A plant of healing virtues was a good plant, attributed to the Virgin
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or a saint, and typifying their virtues, and a harmful plant was evil,
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beneath the patronage of the Devil, typifying and inducing envy,
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hatred, or perhaps malice.
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Lastly there were the mystic symbolists, and it is they who have had
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most influence on pictorial art. There were those who, like Saint
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Bernard of Clairvaux, could discern through the darkened glass of Old
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Testament metaphor the divine facts of New Testament revelation, and
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those who, like Saint Mectilda of Germany, were favoured by Heaven
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with clear and detailed visions, in which Christ Himself deigned to
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explain the complicated symbolism of His surroundings, His embroidered
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robes and jewelled ornaments. And there were those mystics who were not
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in holy orders, who did not claim direct communication with Heaven,
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yet who have, nevertheless, by giving shape and colour to the vague
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indications of Holy Writ as to the future state, and by materializing,
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as it were, the illusive inner vision of things invisible, profoundly
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influenced the religious sentiment, if not the theology, of the world.
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Chief among them is the poet Dante, the friend of Giotto and the
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spiritual father of both the poets and the artists of the Italian
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Renaissance. In Germany his place was taken by Conrad von Würtzburg, a
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poet of infinitely less genius but who equally influenced his native
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art, at least as far as devotional representations of the Virgin Mary
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were concerned. He was a minnesinger who consecrated the last effort of
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a long life to praising the virtues of her whom he terms ‘The Empress
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of Heaven.’ About the year 1286 he wrote ‘The Golden Forge,’ which he
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describes as:
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‘A golden song
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Forged in the smithy of my heart
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And beautifully inlaid
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With the jewelled thoughts of my heart.’
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It is an eulogy of the Virgin, close-packed with allegory, simile and
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metaphor, which are borrowed for the greater part from the Fathers of
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the Church, but some few are of his own finding.
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His work was never to be compared with that of the great Italian, but
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it very strongly influenced the hymnology and the pictorial expression
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of the cult of the Virgin in both the Netherlands and Germany.
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In England there was no great symbolist among the early poets.
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They were plain tales of love and war that Chaucer told in ‘English
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undefyled.’ But the Church in England produced some beautiful mystical
|
||
hymns, notably the one to the Virgin, written, perhaps, about 1350,
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||
which begins:
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||
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||
‘Of a rose, a lovely rose,
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Of a rose is al myn song.’
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||
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* * * * *
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||
Religious pictures are of two types: the historical, which aims at
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||
depicting a sacred scene exactly as it did occur; and the devotional,
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||
which presents a divine or holy figure in the attitude and with the
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||
surroundings best calculated to inflame the devotion of the worshipper.
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||
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||
To the first category belongs Rubens’ ‘Descent from the Cross.’[4] The
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dead Figure, the sustained effort of the men who detach it from the
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||
Cross, the grief-stricken women, are all depicted with perfect realism
|
||
and strict attention to historical detail. It merely depicts the scene
|
||
as it might have occurred, and no attempt is made to guide or suggest
|
||
the emotions of the beholder.
|
||
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||
To the second category belong many of the early Crucifixions. The
|
||
figure of the Saviour is emaciated to a painful degree. On each side
|
||
of the Cross hover angels catching in a chalice the holy blood as it
|
||
falls. At the summit a nesting pelican tears its breast; at the foot
|
||
a skull is placed within a niche. Here a distinct emotional appeal
|
||
is made--to man’s pity, for the sufferings of the Christ; to his
|
||
gratitude, since the preciousness of the holy blood is so emphasized.
|
||
The pelican in its piety is the symbol of Christ’s devotion to His
|
||
Church, and the skull invites meditation upon the eternal death from
|
||
which He saved us.
|
||
|
||
In pictures of the devotional type the spiritual cause or effect of the
|
||
incident illustrated is usually indicated by symbols. The reason why
|
||
the Godhead sits as a child upon His Mother’s knee is indicated by the
|
||
apple which He holds in His hand. As the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
|
||
of Good and Evil it is the symbol of Adam’s fault, which, through His
|
||
incarnation, Christ repaired--and, thereby, to instructed Christians,
|
||
it foretells the tragedy of the Crucifixion. So, in an Annunciation,
|
||
the lily in the angel Gabriel’s hand indicates the quality by which
|
||
Mary found favour in God’s sight, and it foreshadows also the sinless
|
||
birth of the Saviour.
|
||
|
||
It should be clearly understood to which figure in a composition the
|
||
symbols used refer. When a personage of mortal birth, prophet, apostle,
|
||
martyr or saint, holds a symbol or attribute, it almost invariably
|
||
refers to his own history. Archangels usually hold their own attribute,
|
||
but the symbols or emblems which angels carry, or which are used
|
||
decoratively, placed against the sky or laid upon the ground, are
|
||
always to be referred to the principal figure in the scene represented.
|
||
The sword and lily in a ‘Last Judgment’ represent the omnipotence and
|
||
integrity of the Judge; the rose and lily in an ‘Assumption’ the love
|
||
and the purity of the Madonna; the palm in a martyrdom the triumph of
|
||
the martyr.
|
||
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||
|
||
II
|
||
|
||
THE FLOWER SYMBOLISTS
|
||
|
||
|
||
Christian symbolists divided the plant world into three divisions--the
|
||
good, the bad, and those which, from want of definite characteristics,
|
||
were not worthy of notice. In their judgment they were guided by
|
||
several principles.
|
||
|
||
In the first place, and this was the most important method, they
|
||
searched the Scriptures for their warrant as to the good or evil
|
||
tendencies of any plant or flower. Those with whom the Divinity had
|
||
identified Himself took precedence of all others. Christ had said,
|
||
‘I am the True Vine,’ and the vine, since the earliest days of
|
||
Christianity, has had the place of highest honour in the decoration
|
||
of Christian churches as the emblem of Christ Himself. When the
|
||
difficulties were removed which prevented the Early Church from
|
||
representing Christ under His own form, the emblem was less seen, but
|
||
it has always remained a sacred plant, and designs based upon its form
|
||
still frequently decorate the altar and the sacred vessels.
|
||
|
||
Also those plants introduced as metaphors in the Song of Solomon,
|
||
‘the flower of the field,’ ‘the lily of the valleys,’ ‘the lily among
|
||
thorns,’ ‘the orchard of pomegranates,’ myrrh and camphire, spikenard,
|
||
saffron and cinnamon, trees of frankincense and ‘the chief spices,’
|
||
which refer to the ‘Beloved’ and the ‘Spouse,’ are all considered holy
|
||
plants, and by the Roman Catholic Church are assigned to the Virgin
|
||
Mary.
|
||
|
||
In the beautiful twenty-fourth chapter of Ecclesiasticus, too,
|
||
Christian symbolists have recognized the Virgin Mary beneath the figure
|
||
of Wisdom, and hold as sanctified those growing things to which she is
|
||
likened.
|
||
|
||
‘I was exalted like a palm tree in Engeddi, and as a rose plant in
|
||
Jericho, as a fair olive tree in a pleasant field, and grew up as a
|
||
plane tree by the water.
|
||
|
||
‘As the turpentine tree I stretched out my branches, and my branches
|
||
are the branches of honour and grace.
|
||
|
||
‘As the vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the
|
||
fruit of honour and riches.’
|
||
|
||
In the second place, those flowers and plants which are beneficial to
|
||
man, as the wheat and the olive, were decided to be good, and those
|
||
that were hurtful to man, as the tare and the thistle, were evil. Here
|
||
herbalism and magic step very close to symbolism, for healing plants,
|
||
or those which were useful as a charm against the devil, were good;
|
||
those which were poisonous, or used for evil purpose, such as raising a
|
||
spirit, were bad. Thus the nettle, which, when used with due ceremony,
|
||
dissipates fear, becomes a symbol of courage, and myrrh, which is
|
||
an antidote to love-philtres and drives away voluptuous thoughts,
|
||
is held to be a plant of chastity. Of this particular species of
|
||
symbolism Albertus Magnus,[5] Master of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint
|
||
Hildegarde,[6] Abbess of Rupertsburg, were the principal exponents.
|
||
|
||
Also a plant’s habit of growth was taken as an indication of its
|
||
character. The cedar, with unbending head and grandly-spreading
|
||
branches, was considered, both by Saint Melitus and Petrus of Capua,
|
||
to typify pride, while the violet, wearing the colour of mourning, and
|
||
keeping timidly beneath its leaves, they chose as a symbol of humility.
|
||
|
||
Some symbols were of pagan origin, for the palm of victory and the
|
||
olive branch of peace were borrowed from the Romans, who had themselves
|
||
inherited them from older civilizations. Their significance was not
|
||
changed but simply limited and sanctified; the victory, for Christians,
|
||
was the victory over sin, and the peace, the peace of God.
|
||
|
||
These various methods of determining the value of different plants as
|
||
symbols did not always accord. M. Huysman, in _La Cathédrale_, a very
|
||
complete study in Christian symbolism, instances the sycamore: ‘Saint
|
||
Melitus proclaims that the sycamore stands for cupidity.... Raban Maur
|
||
and _L’anonyme de Clairvaux_ qualify it as the unbelieving Jew; Petrus
|
||
of Capua compares it to the Cross, Saint Eucher to wisdom.’
|
||
|
||
Even the sifting of the text of Scripture did not always lead to
|
||
identical conclusions. ‘I am the rose of Sharon’ (or ‘the flower of
|
||
the field’) ‘and the lily of the valleys,’ sings the lover of the
|
||
Canticles, who prefigures, according to Origen, Jesus Christ. But Saint
|
||
Bernard of Clairvaux found that the words veiled the personality of the
|
||
Virgin Mary, and other writers consider that they refer to the Church
|
||
of God upon earth.
|
||
|
||
There were, in fact, two schools of symbolists though they did not
|
||
differ greatly. There were those who wrote before the eleventh century
|
||
and whose influence is traced in the mosaics of Rome, Ravenna and
|
||
the Baptistery of Florence, and those later ones whose authority was
|
||
accepted by the painters of the Italian Renaissance and through them
|
||
spread throughout the Christian world. Durandus, standing midway
|
||
between the two schools of symbolism, held chiefly to the more ancient,
|
||
though he also recognized the newer, usage.
|
||
|
||
But after the twelfth century the painters of Siena alone kept to the
|
||
ancient meaning of the symbols; Florence and the later schools broke
|
||
away entirely.
|
||
|
||
As far as flower-symbols were concerned the chief difference was in the
|
||
use of the lily, which from being the flower indicative of heavenly
|
||
bliss became the especial flower of the Virgin, typifying her purity.
|
||
Also the rose, the flower of martyrdom, became the symbol of divine
|
||
love, and the palm tree and the acanthus dropped out of devotional
|
||
representations altogether.
|
||
|
||
In the main, after the twelfth century, symbolists were agreed. There
|
||
were certain fruits and flowers about which there never had been any
|
||
doubt. The vine had been the emblem of Jesus Christ from the beginning
|
||
of Christian theology. The white lily, as a symbol of chastity, came
|
||
perhaps from the Hebrews, but all Christian writers were agreed as to
|
||
its fitness as a symbol of purity and as an emblem or attribute of the
|
||
Virgin Mary. The violet was the symbol of humility, and therefore, say
|
||
Petrus of Capua and Saint Mectilda, the emblem of Christ when on earth.
|
||
Saint Mectilda and Bishop Durandus, for the same reason, consider it
|
||
the emblem of confessors.
|
||
|
||
The rose was long in disgrace as the flower of Venus. But even saints
|
||
could not exclude it from their lives, and gradually it crept into
|
||
Christian hagiology. Roses decorate some of the most poetical of the
|
||
histories in the _Legenda Aurea_, which was compiled by Jacobus de
|
||
Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, during the last half of the thirteenth
|
||
century, and there are roses in plenty in the pictures of the fifteenth
|
||
century. Their meaning, at first sight, is not so clearly defined as
|
||
is that of some other flowers. Raban Maur and _L’anonyme de Clairvaux_
|
||
had used them as the type of charity; Durandus had explained them, red
|
||
and white, as emblems of martyrs and virgins. Walafrid Strabo also
|
||
considered them the symbols of martyrdom, but in the Golden Legend and
|
||
in the pictures of the Renaissance, when plucked and falling, or when
|
||
sent from Heaven, they are symbols of divine love; when they are woven
|
||
into wreaths they symbolize heavenly joy.
|
||
|
||
The symbolism of the lesser flowers is not so clear, but the water
|
||
lily and the saffron as well as the rose were held by Raban Maur to be
|
||
symbols of charity; verdure, according to Durandus, was the emblem of
|
||
beginners in the faith; the heath, hyssop, convolvulus and violet all
|
||
represent humility; the lettuce temperance; the elder, zeal; and the
|
||
thyme, activity. Of these, however, with the exception of the violet,
|
||
Christian art has taken little note.
|
||
|
||
There are certain flowers which appear repeatedly in pictures which
|
||
represent the garden of Heaven; they grow in the ‘Enclosed Garden’
|
||
of the Madonna, and surround the Infant Christ when He is laid upon
|
||
the ground to receive adoration. They are the rose and the lily, and
|
||
also the violet, the pink and the strawberry, the last with fruit and
|
||
flowers together. The symbolists are unanimous in ascribing humility
|
||
to the violet; the pink or carnation, which is usually introduced when
|
||
there are no roses, is, like the rose, the flower of divine love; the
|
||
strawberry with fruit and flower represents the good works of the
|
||
righteous, or the fruits of the spirit.
|
||
|
||
To these are sometimes added the clover and the columbine. According
|
||
to the legend, Saint Patrick was the first to use the trefoil as an
|
||
illustration of the Trinity in Unity, and the shamrock or clover is
|
||
the emblem of the Holy Trinity. The little doves which make up the
|
||
flower of the columbine wonderfully resemble the little doves which in
|
||
early art, particularly in the French miniatures of the thirteenth and
|
||
fourteenth centuries, represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. It
|
||
is true that in the columbine the little doves number five, not seven,
|
||
but the Flemish artists, always extremely careful in their symbolism,
|
||
rectified this by painting the plant with seven blooms upon it. It
|
||
should only be used as the attribute of God the Son.
|
||
|
||
Towards the end of the fifteenth century a tiny niche was made for
|
||
the daisy in Christian iconography. It is found almost exclusively
|
||
in ‘Adorations,’ where it replaces the _lilium candidum_. It was
|
||
felt that, suitable as the tall austere lily might be to express the
|
||
Virgin’s purity or the celibacy of the monastic saints, the little
|
||
wide-eyed daisy was a prettier, sweeter symbol of the perfect innocence
|
||
of the Divine Child.
|
||
|
||
The jasmine is not strictly a holy flower and has been neglected by
|
||
the writers on symbolism, but it appears repeatedly in religious art.
|
||
Its star-shaped blossom seems to be the symbol of divine hope or of
|
||
heavenly felicity, and it is found with roses and lilies beside the
|
||
Madonna. It forms the crowns of angels, of saints, and of the Madonna
|
||
herself. When it is the attribute of the Infant Christ it recalls the
|
||
Heaven from which He came.
|
||
|
||
The English and Flemish miniaturists add to these the pansy, which is
|
||
the old herb Trinity,[7] bearing the same meaning as the clover.
|
||
|
||
In the Netherlands and Germany the lily of the valley was also used,
|
||
with meek purity as its significance.
|
||
|
||
All these flowers, on account of some accident of shape, colour or
|
||
habit of growth, were considered holy flowers, while others, such as
|
||
the buttercup, the narcissus, the forget-me-not, were rejected as
|
||
meaningless. Fruit in general represents good works, or the fruits of
|
||
the Spirit, faith, hope and peace, and is accounted good; the vine is
|
||
the emblem of Christ Himself, but the fruit, usually taken to be the
|
||
apple, which grew on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, is an
|
||
accursed thing.
|
||
|
||
There are flowers, too, which are the flowers of evil. The poppy
|
||
is the emblem of sloth and also dedicated to Venus; the tulip is
|
||
beloved of necromancers; the black hellebore and the mandrake are
|
||
used by witches in their spells, though, strangely enough, Conrad von
|
||
Würtzburg compares the Virgin Mary to the ‘healing mandrake root.’ Also
|
||
the nettle is the symbol of envy, the hellebore of scandal, and the
|
||
cyclamen of voluptuousness, for, according to Theophrastus, it was used
|
||
in the composition of love philtres.
|
||
|
||
As to thorns and briars, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm are
|
||
agreed that thorn branches signify the minor sins, and briars (or
|
||
thistles) those major ones ‘_quæ pungunt conscientiam propriam_,’ etc.
|
||
|
||
Above all the buckthorn is blamed, for of its branches, says Rohault de
|
||
Fleury, was formed the Crown of Thorns.
|
||
|
||
In art, however, the flowers of evil scarcely appear. The rose is still
|
||
sometimes the flower of Venus and symbolizes the pomps and vanities of
|
||
the world, and there are the thorns of sin and death. Some of the early
|
||
Flemish and German artists painted certain bitter herbs, notably the
|
||
dandelion, in scenes from the Passion, but Christian iconography has
|
||
concerned itself chiefly with those plants and flowers which, with the
|
||
approval of theologians, represent the attributes of the Divinity, of
|
||
the Virgin Mary and of angels, saints and prophets.
|
||
|
||
It may be noticed that while the sacred flowers are not unfrequently
|
||
introduced into profane scenes, the non-sacred flowers, for instance
|
||
the daffodils and foxgloves of the hunting scenes on old Flemish
|
||
tapestry, are never introduced as symbols, and rarely as details, in
|
||
devotional subjects.
|
||
|
||
The same symbolism holds good within the whole Western Church, and
|
||
those Reformed Churches which have rejected painted and carved images
|
||
have preserved a good many of the older symbols in the details of
|
||
church decoration. The most important symbols of Christianity,
|
||
the Lamb, the Dove, the Cross, the Glory, the Halo, remain always
|
||
unchanged. It is the lesser, and more especially the flower symbols,
|
||
which vary in different countries and different schools of painting.
|
||
Italy being the headquarters of the Church, and also the centre from
|
||
which pictorial art spread over Europe, most symbols are of Latin
|
||
origin; but they were modified and often amplified by inherited
|
||
tradition, climate and the general trend of the national religious
|
||
sentiment. So in Italian art, after its re-birth, we find a love of
|
||
simple lines, of refined types, of flowers, and a striving at first
|
||
unconscious, then definite, after classical ideals, while the Northern
|
||
nations, less happy in their traditions, never quite conquered their
|
||
love of barbaric splendour; a rose wrought in pure gold was to them
|
||
more truly a symbol of divine love than a fresh rose of the field.
|
||
|
||
The most important factor in the modification of flower symbolism was
|
||
climate. As the primary use of a symbol was to instruct the unlearned,
|
||
the symbol which was to interpret the hidden mystery must be a familiar
|
||
object. A rare or exotic plant would rather have complicated than
|
||
simplified the teaching. So we find the pomegranate and the olive in
|
||
Italian pictures, but not in those of the Netherlands; the columbine
|
||
and the lily of the valley in German, but not in Spanish art.
|
||
|
||
But it was not climate alone that determined the use or disuse of any
|
||
particular plant as a symbol. If the fleur-de-lys, founded upon the
|
||
iris form, had not been borne by the House of Burgundy, which protected
|
||
the early Flemish school, it is possible that the iris might not have
|
||
appeared in the early Flemish pictures as a flower of the Virgin,
|
||
and certainly had there not been a continual interchange of Flemish
|
||
merchandise, which included painted panels, for Spanish gold, the
|
||
iris would not have taken its place as the characteristic flower of a
|
||
Spanish ‘Immaculate Conception.’
|
||
|
||
Also, had there not been ceaseless warfare and everlasting hatred
|
||
between Florence and Siena, it is possible that Siena would have
|
||
adopted the lily as an attribute of Mary in an Annunciation instead
|
||
of using invariably the olive branch. But the lily was the badge of
|
||
Florence and the cities were desperately jealous of each other, both in
|
||
painting and in politics, and this seems to be the real reason of the
|
||
conservatism of Sienese art.
|
||
|
||
On the whole the symbolism of the Netherlands is the most careful
|
||
and just, and each flower was painted also with such exquisite
|
||
minuteness that there is no possibility of mistaking the variety.
|
||
Italian symbolism was always apt to be superficial, and after the
|
||
fifteenth century often became confused with decoration. Also the
|
||
Italians painted flowers carelessly, and the lesser kinds, those in the
|
||
foreground of an Adoration, for instance, are frequently impossible to
|
||
identify. In Germany symbolism is at times extravagant and far-fetched
|
||
though always interesting. In Spain it is poor and almost entirely
|
||
borrowed. A modern writer[8] observes of Spanish art that it is
|
||
material, brutal, Roman, having, from its geographical position,
|
||
escaped the idealism of Greek or the mysticism of Celtic influences;
|
||
and the same cause may also explain the prosaicness of its symbolism.
|
||
|
||
The English love of flowers, very noticeable in early verse, found
|
||
pictorial expression chiefly in the work of the miniaturists and in the
|
||
‘flower work’ details of architecture. The miniatures executed by monks
|
||
usually pay attention to the symbolical value of each blossom, but the
|
||
carved stone flowers common in both French and English Gothic churches
|
||
were more often simply those which the fancy of the architect or the
|
||
stone-cutter dictated and only represent vaguely ‘good works springing
|
||
from the root of virtues.’
|
||
|
||
The happiest blooming time of these symbolical flowers was the
|
||
fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century artists, still timid of
|
||
innovations, had limited themselves to the lily and the rose. But with
|
||
increasing skill they made a wider choice, though always under the
|
||
eye and with the assistance of those learned in such matters, for the
|
||
majority of sacred pictures were commissioned directly by the Church or
|
||
were ordered as a gift to be presented to some religious community.
|
||
|
||
There were occasionally independent spirits who, in some favourite
|
||
blossom, so far unnoticed, found beauty and symbolic fitness. Thus Sano
|
||
di Pietro of Siena constantly paints the bright blue cornflower (which
|
||
in Italy shares its name of _fiordaliso_ with the iris, the lily and
|
||
the heraldic fleur-de-lys) upon the heads of both angels and saints,
|
||
meaning, perhaps, by the blue stars, to indicate that these beings
|
||
were denizens of the heavenly spaces. However, as a rule, artists
|
||
were conservative and glad to use the recognized symbols as a means of
|
||
emphasizing and elucidating the sacred subject which they depicted.
|
||
|
||
But even before the end of the fifteenth century flowers began
|
||
to be used for their own sake and not for their hidden meaning.
|
||
Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Dürer painted just what flower or weed
|
||
they chose, simply for its form or colour. In the sixteenth century
|
||
flowers were often used merely as decoration, and later, with the
|
||
exception of the rose, the lily, the olive branch and the palm, they
|
||
lost all meaning. Carlo Maratta in the seventeenth century painted a
|
||
figure of the Virgin[9] encircled by a heavy wreath of every sort of
|
||
flower--daffodils, gentians, anemones, tulips, edelweiss, roses and
|
||
lilies, all mixed together.
|
||
|
||
In England, about the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a
|
||
revival of interest in mystical and symbolical art. The Preraphaelite
|
||
Brotherhood was formed in 1848, whose object was to bring back to
|
||
modern art the sincerity and earnestness of those painters who had
|
||
preceded Raphael. The originator of the movement, Dante Gabriel
|
||
Rossetti, adopted in his early work not only the simplicity of type and
|
||
the exceedingly careful finish of the primitives, but borrowed also
|
||
their system of symbolism. His followers, however, and in particular
|
||
Holman Hunt, broke away from the old traditions of religious art,
|
||
painting allegorical subjects suggested by Christ’s parables and
|
||
sayings rather than the scenes of His birth and Passion on which the
|
||
dogmas of the Church were founded, and with the traditional subjects
|
||
they left aside also the traditional symbols.
|
||
|
||
The greatest of modern English mystical painters, George Frederick
|
||
Watts, uses flowers as details, and apparently as symbols. But their
|
||
exact meanings are obscure and apparently not those attributed to them
|
||
by the great masters of past centuries.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration: THE BADGE OF THE ORDER OF THE LILY OF NAVARRE]
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Photo Alinari_
|
||
|
||
THE FLOWERS OF HEAVEN
|
||
|
||
Mosaic of the 13th century
|
||
|
||
(Baptistry, Florence)]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
III
|
||
|
||
THE LILY
|
||
|
||
|
||
Gioacchino di Fiore, the mystical theologian who founded the community
|
||
of ‘The Flower,’ and who is held by some to be the spiritual father
|
||
of Saint Francis, writing in the last decade of the twelfth century,
|
||
divided the life of humanity into three periods. In the first, during
|
||
the reign of the Father, men lived under the rule of the law; in the
|
||
second, reigned over by the Son, men live beneath the rule of grace; in
|
||
the third the Spirit shall reign and men shall live in the plenitude
|
||
of love. The first saw the shining of the stars; the second sees the
|
||
whitening of the dawn; the third will behold the glory of the day. The
|
||
first produced nettles; the second gives roses; the third will be the
|
||
age of lilies.
|
||
|
||
Thus as daylight to dawn or starlight, and as love to grace and fear,
|
||
were lilies to every other flower or weed, and since the twelfth
|
||
century, in Christian art, lilies have had precedence of every other
|
||
growing thing.
|
||
|
||
The earliest use of the lily by the artists of the Christian Church was
|
||
to indicate the delights of Paradise. Raban Maur, Archbishop of Mayence
|
||
in 847, writes of lilies as the symbols of celestial beatitude, and
|
||
that is apparently what they represent in the mosaics of Rome, Ravenna
|
||
and the Baptistery of Florence, where they spring from the ground in
|
||
the scenes which represent Heaven.
|
||
|
||
But by the tenth century the Church had commenced to adopt the
|
||
pre-Christian employment of the lily as the symbol of purity, and the
|
||
rose gradually took the lily’s place as the flower of heavenly bliss.
|
||
|
||
The lily of sacred art is the _lilium candidum_, sometimes called the
|
||
Madonna lily, or the lily of Saint Catharine. It is said to be a native
|
||
of the Levant, but appears to have spread with Roman civilization
|
||
throughout Europe. The suggestion of abstract purity is arresting and
|
||
direct. The stalk is straight and upright, the leaves narrow, plain,
|
||
almost austere. At the top of the long stalk the flowers cluster, each
|
||
chalice-shaped, and sending to the sky a perfume which is singularly
|
||
sweet and piercing. Their form is simple but noble, and they are above
|
||
all remarkable for the immaculate and luminous whiteness of their firm
|
||
petals.
|
||
|
||
After the twelfth century the lily is always used as the symbol of
|
||
purity in its perfection, and is most usually associated with the
|
||
Virgin Mary and with saints of the monastic orders. More rarely it is
|
||
used as an attribute of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. In a large
|
||
picture[10] representing the Trinity in Glory, by an unknown Neapolitan
|
||
painter of the seventeenth century, God the Father holds a stalk of
|
||
lilies in his left hand, above which hovers the mystic Dove. Since
|
||
Christian iconography gives no attributes to God the Father except the
|
||
orb and crown of omnipotence, the lily must be taken as the attribute
|
||
of the Holy Ghost; and in a rare subject, The Adoration of the Holy
|
||
Ghost,[11] ascribed by Behrenson to the _Amico di Sandro_, the two
|
||
angels with swinging censers and lovely floating draperies, who adore
|
||
the hovering Dove, carry each a lily. The Dove in conjunction with
|
||
the lily is also found upon the great central doors of Saint Peter
|
||
in Rome. They are of bronze, and were executed between 1439 and 1445
|
||
by Antonio Filarete. There are two panels with elaborate borders and
|
||
much interesting detail. On one is Saint Peter with the keys and on
|
||
the other Saint Paul. Saint Paul is of the traditional type, bald and
|
||
bearded, and holds in his right hand a drawn sword. By his side is a
|
||
large vase of lilies, and on the highest flower, its beak touching the
|
||
sword’s hilt, is the Dove, encircled by a halo. The lilies and the Dove
|
||
are introduced apparently to correct the impression of violence given
|
||
by the uplifted sword, the instrument of the Apostle’s martyrdom, and
|
||
together representing the Holy Spirit, they recall Saint Paul’s own
|
||
phrase, ‘the sword of the Spirit.’
|
||
|
||
As an attribute of God the Son, lilies are used in those pictures known
|
||
as Adorations, where the divine Child is laid upon the ground and the
|
||
Mother kneels before Him in worship; and in those pictures where she
|
||
holds Him, no longer a very young infant, on a ledge or pedestal before
|
||
her. In these pictures all the symbolism refers to the Child, and if He
|
||
lie among roses and lilies they signify respectively divine love and
|
||
perfect sinlessness. If angels hold vases of lilies on either side,
|
||
these lilies recall that He was born of a Virgin.
|
||
|
||
The first Adorations were painted by the Florentine masters of the
|
||
fifteenth century. In an early example by Filippo Lippi[12] the flowers
|
||
are small and the species scarcely to be determined. Neri di Bicci[13]
|
||
painted roses and lilies, and Luca della Robbia[14] has placed the
|
||
Child beneath a freely-growing clump of tall lilies. The Virgin kneels
|
||
before Him, while heavenly hands hold above her head a crown ornamented
|
||
with the royal fleur-de-lys. Botticelli[15] appears to have been the
|
||
first to have substituted the daisy for the lily, and to the daisy he
|
||
added the violet of humility, and the strawberry, which symbolized the
|
||
fruits of the spirit. These flowers were constantly repeated in this
|
||
connection, a comparatively late example of their use being in the
|
||
Adoration of Perugino, now in Munich.
|
||
|
||
These same flowers are found in the North, but as Northern artists
|
||
preferred incidents definitely recounted by the Scriptures to more
|
||
imaginative devotional subjects, they were transferred to Nativities or
|
||
Adorations by the Shepherds.
|
||
|
||
In Siena during the fourteenth century, and in the school of Giotto,
|
||
the lily, usually a single lily-cup, is sometimes placed in the hands
|
||
of the Infant Christ. Here it is not the symbol of purity, but in
|
||
accordance with the older symbolism it is the flower of Paradise.
|
||
Siena was extremely conservative, and for its artists the Holy Child
|
||
was still the royal Child of the Byzantine school, richly clothed,
|
||
His right hand raised in blessing or holding the orb of sovereignty.
|
||
Sometimes He holds a scroll, announcing His high mission, with the
|
||
words ‘Ego sum lux mundi’ or ‘Ego sum via veritas et vita.’ More
|
||
stress is laid upon His divinity than upon His humanity, and there
|
||
is absolutely nothing to hint at or forecast His passion. He appears
|
||
simply as the bringer of peace and blessing, and in His hand is still
|
||
the flower of Paradise, the same lily which grows beside His throne in
|
||
the mosaics.
|
||
|
||
Gradually, however, a fruit replaced the flower in the Christ-Child’s
|
||
hand. At first the fruit, following an artistic tradition as old as the
|
||
fourth century, was also a promise of heavenly bliss, it was a fruit
|
||
from the heavenly gardens; but it was soon identified as the fruit of
|
||
the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, since He, as the Second Adam,
|
||
had come to repair the fault of the first.
|
||
|
||
Meanwhile in Florence, during the fifteenth century, the lily, already
|
||
the flower of the virgin saints, was attributed more especially to the
|
||
Virgin Mary as the symbol of spotless purity, and it became accepted
|
||
throughout Christendom with this significance.
|
||
|
||
Therefore, on the rare occasions after the fourteenth century when the
|
||
lily is placed in the hand of the Infant Christ it is the symbol of
|
||
purity, of His perfect sinlessness. In the Enthroned Madonna of Luca
|
||
Signorelli[16] He holds a large stalk of _lilium candidum_. In the
|
||
great majority of representations of the Madonna with the Child in
|
||
her arms only the symbol in the Child’s own hand refers to Him; other
|
||
symbols refer to Mary. But in this picture, to the jewelled cross of
|
||
the Baptist is attached a scroll with the legend, ‘_Ecce Agnus Dei_,’
|
||
and all the symbols are the attributes of the Saviour. Besides the
|
||
lily, which denotes perfect sinlessness, there are two transparent
|
||
vases in which are jasmine, violets and roses. The jasmine’s starry
|
||
blooms recall the Heaven which He has left, the violet is a symbol of
|
||
His humility, and the rose of His divine love. In the wreath behind
|
||
the throne is jasmine again, with pendant trails of white convolvulus,
|
||
which is also an emblem of humility.[17]
|
||
|
||
Occasionally the Infant Christ is represented offering a branch of
|
||
lilies to a Saint,[18] and then the lily represents the gift of
|
||
chastity, which He bestows.
|
||
|
||
It is only in modern times that Christ, grown to manhood, has been
|
||
represented with a lily in His hand. An instance is the fresco
|
||
illustrating the parable of the Wise and the Foolish Virgins, painted
|
||
in 1864, by Lord Leighton, P.R.A., for Lindhurst Church. The virgins
|
||
stand on either side of the Celestial Bridegroom, who holds in His
|
||
left hand the lily which emphasizes the mystical character of the
|
||
divine nuptials.
|
||
|
||
It may be noticed in this connection that modern, and more particularly
|
||
Protestant, ecclesiastical art takes its subjects largely from the
|
||
parables of Christ, a usage unknown to the Roman Catholic Church during
|
||
the period when the great masters of art were in her service.
|
||
|
||
Northern mediæval art, that is, the art of the Flemish and German
|
||
schools, introduced the lily into representations of the Last Judgment,
|
||
placing the sword and stalk of lilies, ray-wise, behind the head of
|
||
the judging Christ. In the very early representations of this subject
|
||
Christ is depicted with a two-edged sword issuing from His mouth, in
|
||
illustration of the text of the Revelation of Saint John:
|
||
|
||
‘And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword.’
|
||
|
||
And again:
|
||
|
||
‘Which sword proceeded out of his mouth.’
|
||
|
||
But pictorially it was ugly and theologically it was harsh, suggesting
|
||
wrath rather than mercy as the determining impulse at the final doom.
|
||
Then men remembered the promise to the righteous:
|
||
|
||
‘The wilderness and the solitary places shall be glad for them; and the
|
||
desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.’[19]
|
||
|
||
And in a copy of the _Biblia Pauperum_[20] of the fifteenth century
|
||
we find a branch of roses so placed as to balance the sword, both set
|
||
diagonally like rays, one on each side of the head of Christ. The rose
|
||
was placed on Christ’s right hand above the forgiven souls, and clearly
|
||
typified divine love and mercy; the sword on the left was above the
|
||
damned, and typified divine condemnation.
|
||
|
||
But almost immediately the rose was replaced by the lily. The lily
|
||
was, in the fifteenth century, the one distinctly sacred flower. Its
|
||
lance-like habit of growth made it a most symmetrical pendant to the
|
||
sword, and possibly, too, the Church of the North, stern both in
|
||
religious sentiment and in its pictorial expression, preferred the
|
||
lily, which typified the integrity of the judging God, to the rose,
|
||
symbol of His mercy.
|
||
|
||
The Netherlands adopted the symbol. It appears in Memling’s most
|
||
impressive Last Judgment,[21] and in the Last Judgment of Lucas van
|
||
Leyden.[22] The same device was used by Albert Dürer[23] and many of
|
||
the less known German masters; but Rubens, in his magnificent picture
|
||
now in Munich, has replaced the lily by a sceptre.
|
||
|
||
The lily, used in this connection, is not found in Italian art, for
|
||
though the Netherlands, Germany and England adopted the symbolism of
|
||
Italy, Italy, though admiring greatly the technical excellence of the
|
||
Flemish, rarely assimilated the Northern conventions for the expression
|
||
of the intangible.
|
||
|
||
But the lily is usually reserved for virgin saints and martyrs, and
|
||
more particularly for her whom Chaucer names
|
||
|
||
‘Floure of Virgins all’
|
||
|
||
--that is, the Virgin Mary.
|
||
|
||
The Venerable Bede, writing in the early part of the eighth century,
|
||
declares ‘the great white lily’ to be a fit emblem of the resurrection
|
||
of the Virgin; the pure white petals signifying her body; the golden
|
||
anthers her soul within, shining with celestial light.
|
||
|
||
According to Petrus Cantius, cantor of the Cathedral School of Paris
|
||
in the early part of the thirteenth century, the lily represented the
|
||
daughter of Joachim herself, by reason of its whiteness, its aroma,
|
||
delectable above all others, its curative virtues, and finally because
|
||
it springs from uncultivated soil as the Virgin was the issue of Jewish
|
||
parents.
|
||
|
||
As to its curative virtues, it may be added that an anonymous English
|
||
monk, writing in the thirteenth century, prescribes the lily as a
|
||
sovereign remedy for burns; and for the reason that ‘it is a figure of
|
||
the Madonna, who also cures burns, that is, the vices or burns of the
|
||
soul.’[24]
|
||
|
||
But though theologians occasionally used the lily as a symbol of
|
||
virginity, before the eleventh century we do not find it associated
|
||
with the Mother of Christ pictorially, either as her emblem or her
|
||
attribute. There are no lilies in the Catacombs, and those in the
|
||
early mosaics are decorative, or symbols of the joy of Heaven. The
|
||
miniaturists occasionally used the flower as the attribute of virgin
|
||
martyrs, but not in representations of the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
It was by a Spanish king that the lily was first definitely, and in a
|
||
manner pictorially, associated with the Mother of Christ--as her own
|
||
flower. In the eleventh century Spaniards and Moors were each fighting
|
||
for their faith, and the Moslems instituted military orders called
|
||
_rábitos_, the members of which were vowed to perpetual warfare against
|
||
the ‘infidel.’
|
||
|
||
The Christian knights were not to be outdone, and in 1043 Garcias
|
||
of Navarre founded an order of chivalry vowed to the service of the
|
||
Virgin, which he named ‘the Order of the Lily of Navarre.’
|
||
|
||
Edmondson[25] writes: ‘The Order of “Our Lady of the Lily,” or “of
|
||
Navarre,” was instituted in the city of Nagera by Garcias, the sixth
|
||
King of Navarre, in the year 1043, on the occasion of a miraculous
|
||
image of the Virgin Mary issuing forth of a lily, and holding the
|
||
Infant Jesus in her arms, being then discovered in that city. This
|
||
order was composed of thirty knights, chosen out of the principal
|
||
ancient families in Navarre, Biscay and old Castile. Each of these
|
||
knights wore on his breast a lily embroidered in silver, and, on all
|
||
festivals and holy days, he wore about his neck a collar composed of
|
||
a double chain of gold interlaced with Gothic capital letters M; and
|
||
pendent thereunto an oval medal, whereon was enamelled, on a white
|
||
ground, a lily of gold springing out of a mount, supporting a Gothic
|
||
capital letter M, ducally crowned.’[26]
|
||
|
||
Thus the lily became the gage of the Virgin borne by her knights. She
|
||
was now gradually moving from the subordinate though glorious station
|
||
as Mother of the Incarnate Word to a position of her own as Queen of
|
||
Heaven. Saint Ferdinand, possibly unwilling to confront the Moslem with
|
||
the Christ whom they themselves revered as a prophet, bore upon his
|
||
saddle-bow the ivory _Virgen de las Batallas_,[27] and perhaps what
|
||
specially endeared her to the people of Spain was the knowledge that in
|
||
the fealty they paid her the infidel could have neither part nor lot.
|
||
The chosen knight of the Immaculate Virgin was, of course, _Santiago_,
|
||
Saint James, the patron saint of Spain, but every Spanish cavalier
|
||
acknowledged himself the servitor of the Lady of the Lily.
|
||
|
||
Rather more than fifty years after the founding of the Order of the
|
||
Lily of Navarre the poet-saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, was preaching
|
||
his famous series of Homilies on the Song of Solomon. The sermons were
|
||
eighty in number, each based on the text of the Canticles, and each
|
||
celebrating the perfections of the Virgin. Differing from Origen, he
|
||
found the Virgin Mary, not the Christ, to be the speaker of the words:
|
||
‘I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys.’ Differing again
|
||
from the Church father, he further identified ‘the lily among thorns,’
|
||
she who is addressed as ‘my sister, my spouse,’ with the Virgin and not
|
||
with the Church of God upon Earth.
|
||
|
||
Saint Bernard was the most popular preacher of his time; his sermons
|
||
became known throughout the Christian world, and to his influence may
|
||
be traced the high position which the Mother of Christ now holds in
|
||
the Roman Catholic Church. But, so far, the lily had not appeared in
|
||
pictorial art in connection with the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
In the twelfth century, however, we find ecclesiastical seals which
|
||
bear the figure of the Virgin holding by the left hand (or right, as
|
||
it would appear on the impress) the Child, and in her right a branch
|
||
of lilies. Two of these seals, that of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln
|
||
and that of Thornholm Priory in Lincolnshire, are now in the British
|
||
Museum. It seems to have been the fashion in the eleventh, twelfth and
|
||
thirteenth centuries to engrave the owner’s figure on a seal with a
|
||
flower in the hand. On the seal of Capet Henri I he is shown with a
|
||
sceptre in one hand and a fleur-de-lys in the other, and the figures
|
||
on the seals of the Queens of France have a flower in either hand.
|
||
Therefore it was only natural, when cutting the Virgin’s figure on a
|
||
seal, that the craftsman should give her a flower too, and the Virgin’s
|
||
own flower, the lily.
|
||
|
||
The conservatism of churchmen and the traditions of Byzantine art
|
||
still kept lilies at the threshold of the Church till the Renaissance
|
||
came. It came like the spring, uncertainly at first, with puffs and
|
||
gusts and relapses, but every day the atmosphere grew more genial,
|
||
more life-giving, till at last every branch of human thought was alive
|
||
and growing. The old early Christian fear of beauty as a devil’s lure
|
||
was dying fast, and as scholars and artists studied with new interest
|
||
the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome, the old pagan joy of perfect
|
||
form in art as in literature revived once more. A representation of
|
||
the climax of the Christian tragedy could only be an awful thing, but
|
||
childhood and womanhood had the right to beauty. The old Byzantine
|
||
panels of the Child-Christ and His Mother were little more than a
|
||
formula; the lines and colour were not beautiful, though understood
|
||
to represent a thing of beauty. Now artists and people required that
|
||
she who, on the word of Scripture, was ‘the fairest among women,’[28]
|
||
should be adequately presented, and the Church gave consent. But it was
|
||
understood that the loveliness of the Virgin should be strictly the
|
||
beauty of holiness, for Saint Ambrose had affirmed[29] that, in the
|
||
Mother of God, corporeal beauty had been, as it were, the reflection
|
||
of the beauty of the soul, and the early artists, hampered by lack
|
||
of technical skill and confused by monkish ideals of asceticism, too
|
||
often rendered their Madonnas emaciated and bloodless, even languid and
|
||
fretful in expression, mistaking the outward signs of a subdued flesh
|
||
for those of a perfected spirit.
|
||
|
||
It was at this time that Saint Dominic came to Italy with his fiery
|
||
zeal, his devotion to the Virgin and his Spanish traditions of the
|
||
flower of Our Lady. For him, the quality which raised her so far above
|
||
all other women was her spotlessness; she was ‘_sin pecado_,’ ‘_Maria
|
||
Purissima_.’ Her other phases, as Mother of the Sorrowful, Refuge
|
||
of Sinners, or Consoler of the Afflicted, were to him of secondary
|
||
importance.
|
||
|
||
Already through the preaching of Saint Francis Italian intellect had
|
||
been rendered capable of appreciating the beauty of simplicity. Each
|
||
artist knew that the true beauty of the Queen of Heaven was not to be
|
||
expressed by jewels or wonderfully-wrought raiment, and as the words
|
||
of Saint Dominic passed from mouth to mouth, the people of Italy came
|
||
to understand that the most precious virtue of Christ’s Mother was her
|
||
purity, symbolized very fitly by the lily. The symbol, beautiful in
|
||
itself, and so suggestive of the quality it represented, impressed the
|
||
imagination clearly, and presently there was a bloom of pictured lilies.
|
||
|
||
The mosaicist Cavallini,[30] Duccio di Buoninsegna,[31] Giotto,[32]
|
||
Simone Martini,[33] and Orcagna[34] led the way, and the Christian
|
||
artists of the world have followed. The earliest lilies flowered in
|
||
Rome; but Siena, Umbria, Florence, Venice, and later the Netherlands
|
||
and Germany, all soon had their votaries of the mystic flower. The
|
||
French ivory workers of the fourteenth century, influenced doubtless
|
||
by the tradition of the seal-cutters, frequently placed flowers in the
|
||
hand of the Madonna. These little ivory statuettes are usually very
|
||
sweet in type and often exquisite in workmanship. The Child is held
|
||
on the left arm, and the right hand holds a large single lily cup, a
|
||
pear-like fruit, or, more generally, a natural stalk of lilies with
|
||
leaves and flowers. Always when placed beside the Virgin, or in her
|
||
hand, the lily is the symbol of her purity, and a lily standing alone,
|
||
as does the beautiful stem in _pietra-dura_ work, which decorates the
|
||
little oratory of ‘Our Lady of the Annunciation’ in the Church of
|
||
the Santissima Annunziata of Florence, is the emblem of the Madonna
|
||
herself, the ‘Lilium inter Spinas.’
|
||
|
||
Modern Biblical commentators are agreed that the ‘lily of the valleys’
|
||
of the Song of Solomon is not the white lily of Europe but the scarlet
|
||
anemone. The _lilium candidum_ appears never to have grown in Syria. In
|
||
the late spring and early summer, however, the anemones grow thickly
|
||
in every grassy patch around Jerusalem and throughout Palestine. That
|
||
the flower mentioned is red seems indicated by the comparison between
|
||
it and the lips of the ‘Beloved,’ and the anemone, which responds so
|
||
readily to the sun, throwing back its scarlet petals and baring its
|
||
heart to the warmth, might well stand for the passionate lover of the
|
||
Canticles.
|
||
|
||
But the fathers of the Church held the flower to be a _lilium_, and for
|
||
the Church and for sacred art it was and remains the _lilium candidum_.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration: _From French MS. of 14th Century_]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
IV
|
||
|
||
THE IRIS
|
||
|
||
|
||
The only rival to the _lilium candidum_ as the lily of the Virgin
|
||
is the iris. Strictly speaking, it is not a lily at all, for the
|
||
_Iridacea_ and the _Liliacea_ are distinct botanical orders. But in
|
||
Germany it is known as the sword-lily, from its sword-shaped leaves; in
|
||
France it has always been identified with the ‘fleur-de-lys’; in Spain
|
||
it is a ‘lirio’--a lily--and Shakespeare writes:
|
||
|
||
‘... And lilies of all kinds
|
||
The Flower-de-luce being one.’
|
||
|
||
Its first appearance as a religious symbol is in the work of the early
|
||
Flemish masters, where it both accompanies and replaces the white lily
|
||
as the flower of the Virgin. Roger van der Weyden[35] paints both
|
||
flowers in a vase before the Virgin, and the iris alone in another
|
||
picture[36] of Mary with the Holy Child. In his ‘Annunciation’[37] the
|
||
vase holds only white lilies. There is iris growing among the roses in
|
||
Jan van Eyck’s ‘Virgin of the Fountain,’[38] but in his Annunciations
|
||
there is only the white lily. Memling, however, places an iris half
|
||
hidden below the lilies in one Annunciation,[39] while in a ‘Madonna
|
||
with the Child’[40] there is also a single iris, though in this case
|
||
the iris rises above the lilies.
|
||
|
||
The Master of Flémalle in his fine ‘Saint Barbara’[41] places an iris
|
||
in a vase beside the saint, where the white lily of a virgin martyr
|
||
might have been expected.
|
||
|
||
The symbolism of the iris and the lily at first sight appears to be
|
||
identical, and the substitution of the iris for the _lilium_ seems
|
||
to be the result of some confusion between ‘lys’ and ‘fleur-de-lys,’
|
||
accentuated by the likeness between the iris and the lilies of the
|
||
French royal standard with which the people of the Netherlands were
|
||
familiar, since they were emblazoned on the shield of the Dukes of
|
||
Burgundy.
|
||
|
||
In the mosaics of Ravenna, where the lily is used to indicate the
|
||
delights of Heaven, it is drawn in silhouette, showing three petals,
|
||
and very closely resembles the ‘fleur-de-lys’ of heraldry. The same
|
||
convention born of the extreme difficulty of giving modelled form in
|
||
utter whiteness, particularly in a medium unfitted to express fine
|
||
gradations of shade, is found in woven work, tooled leather, and
|
||
embroidery, and the common likeness of the imperfectly-rendered _lilium
|
||
candidum_ and the iris to the sacred lily of the French and English
|
||
royal standards, is sufficient to account for any indecision as to
|
||
which was precisely the Virgin’s lily. It is conceivable, too, that
|
||
the artists of the Netherlands, when they painted a Madonna for their
|
||
churches, set her in the midst of the iris which grew so thickly round
|
||
their doors rather than limit her patronage to the white lily, which
|
||
was still exotic and confined to some few convent gardens. For the iris
|
||
made their Lady more entirely their own--and so she would appeal more
|
||
strongly to the emotions of the simple.
|
||
|
||
But in the Netherlands, in the fifteenth century, symbolism was usually
|
||
very precise, and there does seem to be a slight difference in the
|
||
use of the two lilies. The _lilium candidum_ is used exclusively
|
||
as the symbol of virginal purity, more particularly in relation to
|
||
the fact that the Virgin Mary was a mother, but the iris, the royal
|
||
lily, appears to be the emblem or attribute of the incarnate Godhead.
|
||
Though Saint Bernard of Clairvaux had attributed the metaphor, ‘I am
|
||
... the lily of the valleys,’ to the Virgin, Origen, the older and,
|
||
in the North, weightier authority, held Christ to be the lily. In
|
||
the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’[42] of Hugo van der Goes, where the
|
||
symbolism all refers to the Child, there is no white lily, but the
|
||
orange lily and the purple and white iris. In the Annunciation of
|
||
Memling, the single iris below the lilies may be the emblem of the
|
||
Prince of David’s house who was to be born of virginal innocence--and
|
||
it may have the same meaning where it rises above the lilies in the
|
||
picture where the royal Child sits upon His mother’s knee. It may also
|
||
indicate royal birth in the ‘Saint Barbara’ of the Prado. She was
|
||
the daughter of a King, but in this painting has no crown or other
|
||
attribute of royalty. It is noticeable, too, that had there been a
|
||
white lily in the vase it would have been difficult to distinguish
|
||
this Saint Barbara from a figure of the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
The idea of royalty in connection with the iris received support from
|
||
the constant recurrence of the ‘fleur-de-lys,’ accepted as an iris
|
||
(though some contend that the form, as a symbol of royalty, came
|
||
originally from Egypt and was founded on the lotus), on royal crowns
|
||
and sceptres. Memling and his school used such crowns as the symbol of
|
||
divine majesty, placing them upon the heads of God the Father,[43] of
|
||
God the Son,[44] and also on the head of the Virgin Mary.[45]
|
||
|
||
Dante also appears to use the ‘fleur-de-lys’ or ‘fiordaliso’ as a
|
||
symbol of honour:
|
||
|
||
‘... Beneath the sky
|
||
So beautiful, came four-and-twenty elders (signori)
|
||
By two and two, with flower-de-luces crown’d.’[46]
|
||
|
||
Some commentators, taking the four-and-twenty personages as the
|
||
four-and-twenty canonical books of the Old Testament, consider the
|
||
crowns of flowers to be symbolical of the purity of the doctrine found
|
||
within the books, holding a ‘fiordaliso’ to equal the white lily as a
|
||
symbol, but it is possible that the poet meant the formal fleur-de-lys
|
||
upon a golden crown or the fresh iris blooms which would also form a
|
||
crown of honour.
|
||
|
||
The iris is sometimes used symbolically in Italy, and there is in the
|
||
Church of S. Spirito in Florence an ‘Annunciation’ now usually ascribed
|
||
to Pesello. Between Mary and the angel stands a vase from which spring
|
||
three purple iris. This vase, on either side of which the figures
|
||
bend, is not merely a variation of the vase of white lilies indicating
|
||
the virginity of Mary which is seen in so many early Annunciations,
|
||
but it is the same symbol developed and enriched, till it represents
|
||
the dogma of the immaculate birth of Christ. The vase, in many cases
|
||
transparent, typifies Mary, and the upspringing flower is the emblem of
|
||
the incarnate Godhead.[47]
|
||
|
||
Ghirlandaio places the iris, violet and daisy, each growing up strongly
|
||
and freshly from the bare ground of the stableyard, in his ‘Adoration
|
||
of the Shepherds,’[48] and in a picture of the sixteenth century by
|
||
Palmezzano of Forlì,[49] the Child, seated on His Mother’s knee, holds
|
||
a stem of iris as a sceptre; but, on the whole, the iris was little
|
||
painted in Italy.
|
||
|
||
In art which is purely German the iris is very rarely used, though
|
||
Albert Dürer painted a ‘Madonna of the Sword-lily,’[50] but in Spain
|
||
it holds an important place. Spanish art is poor in symbolism,
|
||
though it recognized early and prized highly the white lilies of
|
||
the Annunciation. Except, perhaps, for the flame-tipped dart of
|
||
divine love, there seems to be no symbol of truly Spanish origin,
|
||
and those used by Spanish artists were mostly taken from the art of
|
||
the Netherlands. Flemish art was profoundly admired in Spain, and
|
||
the Spanish were well acquainted with it, for there was naturally
|
||
much intercourse between the two countries in the days before the
|
||
Netherlands established their independence. Also Jan van Eyck visited
|
||
Portugal and Spain in the train of his patron, Philip the Good of
|
||
Burgundy, and from the Hispano-Mauresque types in some of the later
|
||
work of the Master of Flémalle there is reason to think that he, too,
|
||
had been in the peninsula.
|
||
|
||
The symbol of the Flemish painters which particularly appealed to the
|
||
Spanish was the iris, which grew small and wild upon their own hills,
|
||
and with a freer, heavier growth in the palace gardens, whose admirable
|
||
water-works had been planned and executed by the despised Moors. They
|
||
adopted the iris as the royal lily of the Virgin, the attribute of the
|
||
Queen of Heaven, as the _lilium candidum_ was the attribute of the Maid
|
||
of Nazareth. The iris, therefore, was deemed particularly suitable as
|
||
a detail in that most favourite Spanish devotional representation of
|
||
the Virgin, an ‘Immaculate Conception.’ The Virgin, represented as the
|
||
woman ‘clothed with the sun and the moon beneath her feet,’ is usually
|
||
attended by child angels who carry roses, lilies, palm and olive. The
|
||
purple iris is generally added, and sometimes the white lily is omitted
|
||
and the iris only given. The Spaniards, therefore, attached the same
|
||
idea of royalty to the iris as did the Flemings, but transferred the
|
||
attributes from the royal Son to the crowned Mother, for in Spain it is
|
||
not found as the attribute or the emblem of the Infant Christ.
|
||
|
||
Later, the whole Catholic Church seems to have accepted both the iris
|
||
and the lily, and the mosaic altar-frontals of St Peter’s in Rome bear
|
||
a design in which the rose, the lily and the iris are united.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
V
|
||
|
||
THE ROSE
|
||
|
||
|
||
Roses, among the Romans, were the symbol of victory, of triumphant
|
||
love, of the pride and pomp of life, and were by long association as
|
||
pagan as the lily is sacred. The Madonna lily (_lilium candidum_) was
|
||
the flower of the Virgin and of the virgin saints; the rose was the
|
||
flower of Venus.
|
||
|
||
‘And on hire hed, full semmly for to see
|
||
A rose gerlond fressh and wel smelling.’[51]
|
||
|
||
In the ‘Triumph of Venus,’ by Cosimo Tura,[52] the goddess, who is in
|
||
truth a modest-looking lady, fully draped and firmly girdled, wears
|
||
a crown of roses, red and white. Beneath her cockle-shell is another
|
||
picture,[53] the sea is ‘sucking in one by one the falling roses, each
|
||
severe in outline, plucked off short at the stalk, but embrowned a
|
||
little as Botticelli’s roses always are.’[54]
|
||
|
||
But the Church grudged Venus the flower. Roses, said Wilfred Strabo,
|
||
were the flower of martyrdom. ‘_Rosæ martyres, rubore sanguinis_,’
|
||
wrote Saint Melitus, Bishop of Sardes, in the second century, and
|
||
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux found the rose to be a fitting symbol of
|
||
the Passion of our Lord. But though the rose was red to the colour of
|
||
blood, and fenced around with cruellest thorns, it had been so long
|
||
associated with the joys of life that the world refused to recognize
|
||
it as the flower of death. Only as the sign of the triumphant entry of
|
||
the departed soul to Heaven was the symbol acceptable. Roses sprang
|
||
from the blood of those who fell for their faith at Roncevaux (as
|
||
indeed they sprang from the spilt blood of Adonis), but they were also
|
||
the sign of victory over the pagan, and when the Virgin Mary was laid
|
||
within her tomb it was in rejoicing that ‘straightway there surrounded
|
||
her flowers of roses which are the blessed company of martyrs.’[55]
|
||
|
||
But the Church, always wise in matters æsthetic, did not insist upon
|
||
the tragic significance of the rose. It was allowed to be still the
|
||
symbol of love, but of divine love, and it is as the symbol of the love
|
||
of God that it now decorates our churches in carvings of wood or stone,
|
||
in the silver work of church ornaments and on embroidered vestments and
|
||
altar frontals.
|
||
|
||
The rose has never been especially associated with the person of
|
||
Christ. Origen, who held that the text which we render, ‘I am the rose
|
||
of Sharon,’ was a self-description of our Lord, read the verse, ‘I am
|
||
the flower of the field,’ so giving the Church no clear image. When in
|
||
art an emblem was required to represent our Lord, the ancient catacomb
|
||
devices of the lamb and the vine were employed. Any reference to Him
|
||
under the metaphor of a flower was rare and usually vague, as the
|
||
charming ‘gold flower’ of the Blickling Homilies. ‘Then the Queen of
|
||
all the maidens gave birth to the true Creator and Consoler of mankind,
|
||
when the gold-flower came unto this world and received a human body
|
||
from S. Mary, the spotless Virgin.’
|
||
|
||
Or again as a fruit rising from the mystical rose:
|
||
|
||
‘Now spring up flouris fra the rute
|
||
Revert you upward naturally
|
||
In honour of the blissit frute
|
||
That raiss up fro the rose Mary.’[56]
|
||
|
||
There are some mediæval Latin hymns for the Nativity in which Christ is
|
||
referred to as the rose springing from the lily. The simile, however,
|
||
was by no means applied to Him exclusively, for in a Visitation hymn
|
||
of the same period He is alluded to as the lily hidden in the rose.
|
||
But though the rose is not often the emblem of Jesus Christ, both in
|
||
literature and art it is used as the symbol of His love.
|
||
|
||
Saint Mectilda, in the discourse on the three perfumes of divine love,
|
||
tells us that ‘the first of these perfumes is the rose-water distilled
|
||
in the still of charity from the most beautiful of all roses, the heart
|
||
of our Lord,’[57] and repeatedly in ecclesiastical art, roses falling
|
||
or fallen from Heaven, signify divine love. The lovely angels in
|
||
Signorelli’s ‘Paradise’[58] carry roses in their looped draperies and
|
||
scatter them down upon the redeemed souls beneath, and in Botticelli’s
|
||
‘Coronation of the Virgin’[59] the air is also full of roses, symbols
|
||
of the love of God. And symbols of divine love are also the falling
|
||
roses in that vision of Saint Francis which was so often painted by
|
||
Spanish artists and called by them ‘La Portincula.’[60] The saint,
|
||
kneeling in his cell one winter’s night, was much troubled by the
|
||
memory of a fair woman. To overcome the temptation he went out and
|
||
threw himself among the briars of the wilderness. He was rewarded by a
|
||
vision of the Saviour, seated in glory, with the Virgin by His side,
|
||
and as a token that his penitences were accepted the thorns bloomed
|
||
with roses. In most renderings of the legend the mystical roses fall in
|
||
a shower around him, and in Murillo’s fine picture[61] the _putti_ are
|
||
energetically pelting the saint with blossoms. It was a subject painted
|
||
_con amore_ by the Spaniards, for--Assumptions apart--the traditions
|
||
of art in Spain were distinctly gloomy and they seized where they could
|
||
an excuse for colour. Even Zurburan succumbed to the roses.[62]
|
||
|
||
The roses which strew the floor of Heaven in a famous diptych[63] by
|
||
an unknown English painter are also symbols of divine love. The panels
|
||
show Richard II, who is presented to the Virgin by Saint John the
|
||
Baptist, Saint Edmund and Saint Edward the Confessor. The roses round
|
||
the Virgin’s feet are pink and yellow, and heavier, handsomer flowers
|
||
than those which are found in Italian pictures of the same period. For
|
||
the rest, this Heaven is especially remarkable for the politeness of
|
||
the blue-winged, blue-robed angels, who each, in compliment to their
|
||
royal visitor, wear his badge--a white hart couchant, collared and
|
||
chained or--upon the shoulder.
|
||
|
||
Red roses, said Saint Bernard, were symbolical of the Passion of our
|
||
Lord, but neither in Church observances nor in art have they been
|
||
generally adopted with that meaning. There is, however, a picture of
|
||
the Christ-Child in Cadiz. He holds the crown of thorns, and at His
|
||
feet are the globe and the apple. All around, filling the background,
|
||
are blood-red roses, symbol of the Passion which was to come.
|
||
|
||
This forecast of pain in the Spanish renderings of the Saviour’s
|
||
infancy is even more marked in a picture by Zurburan,[64] where in play
|
||
He plaits a crown of rose thorns, the flowers lying beside Him and at
|
||
His feet.
|
||
|
||
Divine love and divine passion, intermingled, may be what the roses
|
||
indicate in many ‘Adorations’ of great beauty where the scene is laid
|
||
in a rose-garden. In the ‘Adoration’ of Neri di Bicci[65] the Holy
|
||
Child lies surrounded by lilies and red and pale roses. The lilies
|
||
signify His sinlessness and the roses apparently His love and passion.
|
||
The little Saint John stands behind with a scroll on which is inscribed
|
||
‘_ECCE AGNUS DEI_.’
|
||
|
||
There is a lovely picture[66] now ascribed to Botticini, where
|
||
angels playfully sprinkle rose petals over the Infant Christ in a
|
||
rose-trellised garden. ‘They worship here always alone, though there
|
||
is no gate to the garden; the angels have relinquished high Heaven for
|
||
these delights; for the scent of these roses which they pluck, and the
|
||
Child has relinquished Heaven for these roses, and the thorns which
|
||
he shall gather from them ... the season of their thorns is never
|
||
over, and whilst it is the time of roses in this picture, there is the
|
||
forecast of their thorns in it.’[67]
|
||
|
||
In the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_, a MS. of the fourteenth
|
||
century,[68] the Holy Dove is depicted upon a rose. From the bosom of a
|
||
seated figure, which represents David or Jesse, a rose tree issues. At
|
||
the summit of the tree there is a five-petalled rose, in the centre of
|
||
which, as in a nest, sits a dove, which represents the Holy Ghost.
|
||
|
||
The design is founded upon the text of Isaiah which has been
|
||
paraphrased by Pope:
|
||
|
||
‘From Jesse’s root behold a branch arise,
|
||
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies;
|
||
Th’ ætherial Spirit o’er its leaves shall move
|
||
And on its top descends the sacred Dove.’
|
||
|
||
The rose represents Christ, the perfect flower of the human race,
|
||
sprung from the root of Jesse, and the dove descends upon it as the
|
||
Holy Ghost descended upon our Lord at His baptism in Jordan.
|
||
|
||
Saint Bernard, differing from Origen, identified the Virgin Mary with
|
||
the flower of the field and also with the abstraction described as
|
||
‘Wisdom’ in Ecclesiasticus, ‘exalted like a palm tree in Engeddi and as
|
||
a rose plant in Jericho.’
|
||
|
||
‘_Rosa Mystica, ora pro nobis!_’
|
||
|
||
prays the Church.
|
||
|
||
‘Here is the Rose
|
||
Wherein the Word Divine was made Incarnate,’
|
||
|
||
wrote Dante.
|
||
|
||
An English hymn composed about the year 1300 has the lines:
|
||
|
||
‘Lavedy (Lady), flower of alle thing
|
||
_Rosa sine spina_
|
||
Thu bere Jhesu, hevene king
|
||
_Gratia devina_.’
|
||
|
||
And nearly two centuries later William Dunbar wrote:
|
||
|
||
‘Hevins distil your balmy showris:
|
||
For now is risen the bricht day-stir
|
||
Fro the rose Mary, flour of flowris.’
|
||
|
||
Therefore, in the decoration of churches dedicated to the Madonna,
|
||
the rose frequently occurs. It does not supersede the lily, which
|
||
was the flower especially consecrated to her, but it is found beside
|
||
it. The Church of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome is ornamented along the
|
||
aisles, above the side chapels, with a series of panels, gold on white,
|
||
which show the floral emblems of the Virgin. The rose, the lily, the
|
||
olive, the laurel and the vine alternate down the whole length of the
|
||
church. The beautiful little chapel behind the shrine of the Santissima
|
||
Annunziata, in the Church of the Annunziata in Florence, was decorated
|
||
in the seventeenth century with inlaid and raised _pietra-dura_ work.
|
||
Each of the five onyx panels which form the walls has upon it an emblem
|
||
of the Virgin--the sun, the moon, the _Stella maris_, the lily, and,
|
||
most lovely of them all, the branch of roses below the words ‘Rosa
|
||
Mystica.’ This rose is red, and, strangely enough, the red rose, rather
|
||
than the white, was chosen to represent the Virgin. Wrote Guido Orlandi
|
||
in 1292:
|
||
|
||
‘If thou hadst said, my friend, of Mary,
|
||
Loving and full of grace;
|
||
Thou art a red rose planted in the garden;
|
||
Thou wouldst have written fittingly.’
|
||
|
||
In the _Sarum Book of Hours_, by Philippe Pigouchet,[69] published in
|
||
1501, the huge rose held by the Virgin definitely illustrates her title
|
||
of ‘Rosa Mystica,’ but those pictures of the early Florentine school,
|
||
in which she holds a small red or white rose, show her as the ‘_Madonna
|
||
del Fiore_,’ for as ‘Our Lady of the Flower’ she had been installed
|
||
patroness of the city of Florence. It would have seemed natural, since
|
||
the lily was upon the shield of Florence, to have placed a lily, her
|
||
own flower, in the Madonna’s hand. But the city of Florence had passed
|
||
through troubled times just before the revival of her art, and the
|
||
silver lily on her shield had been replaced by one of crimson.
|
||
|
||
‘Had through dissension been with vermeil dyed.’[70]
|
||
|
||
Rather than paint her with the crimson lily, Florentine artists gave
|
||
her the rose, and she holds a white leafless rose in the dainty little
|
||
picture by Fra Angelico which is now in the Vatican.[71]
|
||
|
||
There was an odd fancy about the beginning of the eighteenth century
|
||
to represent the Virgin Mary as _La Divina Pastora_ feeding her sheep
|
||
with roses. The original picture with this title was by Alfonso
|
||
da Tobar.[72] He found imitators both in Spain and France, and in
|
||
Southern Spain the popularity of the subject still persists. There is
|
||
a plastic group, nearly life-size, in the Church of S. Catalina in
|
||
Cadiz. The Virgin is dressed _à la Watteau_ with a beribboned crook
|
||
and a rose-wreathed hat. She feeds with roses and lilies the sheep and
|
||
lambs gambolling round her knees; an almond tree flowers above, and
|
||
the Christ-Child, dressed as a small shepherd boy, stands in front.
|
||
It is all pink and white, gay and dainty, in a corner of the austere
|
||
whitewashed convent chapel which has Murillo’s beautiful ‘Marriage of
|
||
Saint Catharine’ above the altar. A similar group, but more dignified
|
||
in type and less frivolous in detail, is in the Church of the Holy
|
||
Trinity at Cordova. They are strange artificial flowers of that gloomy
|
||
growth, Spanish Art.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
VI
|
||
|
||
THE CARNATION
|
||
|
||
|
||
In early German devotional poems the _nelken_, the pink, carnation or
|
||
gillyflower, is occasionally used as the simile of the Virgin. Conrad
|
||
von Würtzburg writes:
|
||
|
||
‘Thou art a fragrant gillyflower sprig.’
|
||
|
||
But it has been given no definite and individual status as a symbol.
|
||
|
||
Very frequently, however, in ecclesiastical art, more particularly
|
||
that of Venice and Northern Italy, it is found where the rose might be
|
||
expected. It is placed with the lily in a vase beside the Virgin, with
|
||
the violet before the Infant Christ, and with the wild strawberries
|
||
among the grass of Paradise.
|
||
|
||
In Germany the carnation is seen falling from above with heavenly
|
||
roses, and occasionally, even, in spite of the written legend, it
|
||
replaces the roses in Saint Dorothea’s wreath.
|
||
|
||
It would appear, therefore, that the symbolism of the carnation is
|
||
identical with that of the rose, and when, for any reason, the artist
|
||
did not care to paint the rose, he substituted the carnation.
|
||
|
||
Each year thousands of carnation blossoms are brought to the Lateran
|
||
Church in Rome on the feast-day of Saint John, and the people bring
|
||
carnations, not roses, because by midsummer’s day the blooming time of
|
||
Roman roses is almost past. A scarcity of roses would seem one reason
|
||
at least in the Venetian pictures of the fifteenth century why the
|
||
carnation replaces the rose. Earth, even sufficient to grow a rose
|
||
bush, was scarce in the sea-washed city, but carnations then, as now,
|
||
must have grown in pots on every balcony. So the Venetians painted
|
||
their own familiar flower rather than draw the rose, as Carpaccio did
|
||
his camels, from descriptions furnished by observant travellers.
|
||
|
||
In the Netherlands and Germany artists probably preferred the
|
||
carnation to the rose. It is more precise in shape, neater in its
|
||
habit of growth, richer in colour than the rose, and therefore
|
||
more in the spirit of Northern art, which liked to express definite
|
||
and closely-reasoned symbolism with distinct bright colours and
|
||
sharply-realized form. In the South, the artists, more concerned with
|
||
the depicting of the soul than with the outer shell of things, more
|
||
poetical and also more vague and less accurate in their symbolism, were
|
||
better pleased with the more elusive charms of the loosely-petalled
|
||
rose.
|
||
|
||
In an ‘Adoration’ by Botticelli[73] the Holy Child lies among violets,
|
||
daisies and wild strawberries, and the background is filled with
|
||
freely-growing roses, drawn apparently from memory, not life. The roses
|
||
signify the divine love which impelled the Saviour of the world to be
|
||
born as a human Child. In the same subject by Hugo van der Goes[74]
|
||
three carefully-painted carnations are placed in a crystal vase, and
|
||
are symbols of the divine love of the Holy Trinity by which God the
|
||
Son became incarnate, the crystal vase in Northern art typifying the
|
||
Immaculate Conception.
|
||
|
||
But in the Sienese and Florentine schools also the carnation is
|
||
sometimes found, and very rarely in the same picture as the rose.[75]
|
||
Therefore it would seem conclusive that when the painter of the Church
|
||
did not care to use the rose because, probably, of its association
|
||
with Venus and scenes profane, he was free, if he chose, to use the
|
||
carnation as its substitute.
|
||
|
||
Strangely enough, the most famous carnations in the history of art,
|
||
those two which have given the name of ‘The Master with the Carnations’
|
||
to the anonymous Swiss painter of the fifteenth century, seem to have
|
||
no symbolical significance. The picture[76] shows Saint John the
|
||
Baptist preaching to King Herod from the text: ‘It is not lawful for
|
||
thee to have thy brother’s wife.’ The King is in his chair of state
|
||
and the ladies of his court are seated upon cushions on the tesselated
|
||
pavement before the pulpit. Directly below the pulpit lie the two
|
||
pinks; one is white and one red. Possibly, since roses, according to
|
||
Saint Melitus,[77] Walafrid Strabo[78] and Saint Mectilda,[79] are
|
||
the symbols of martyrdom, the carnation may foreshadow the approaching
|
||
death of the preacher, but they are more probably simply a detail to
|
||
give verisimilitude to the composition, as is the dog that worries a
|
||
bone in the ‘Dance of Salome’ by the same master.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
VII
|
||
|
||
GARLANDS OF ROSES
|
||
|
||
|
||
‘Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds,’[80] cried the revellers in the
|
||
Book of Wisdom, and at Roman feasts host and guests alike wore roses on
|
||
their hair or in garlands round their necks.
|
||
|
||
So in the heavenly mansions, where life is a perpetual feast, unfading
|
||
roses crown the elect. Wreaths of roses are the symbol of heavenly joy
|
||
and are worn alike by angels and by the human souls who have entered
|
||
bliss.
|
||
|
||
An early Christian prisoner dreamt that he was already in Heaven:
|
||
|
||
‘Towards us ran one of the twin children who, three days before,
|
||
had been decapitated with their mother. A wreath of vermilion roses
|
||
encircled his neck and in his right hand he held a green and fresh
|
||
palm.’[81]
|
||
|
||
Beneath Byzantine influence the rosy wreaths turned to crowns of
|
||
jewels, and in the period between Constantine and Justinian crowns
|
||
were considered strictly necessary for the guests at the heavenly
|
||
feasts. But when the King of Heaven Himself was present all reverently
|
||
uncrowned, and it is with their crowns in their hands that the twelve
|
||
apostles stand, and the four-and-twenty elders in the mosaics of Rome
|
||
and Ravenna. In the Neapolitan mosaics in the Chapel of Santa Restituta
|
||
eight figures, apparently of martyrs, hold large crowns resembling
|
||
a victor’s wreath, and the graceful virgin saints on the wall of S.
|
||
Apollinare Nuova each carries her wreath.
|
||
|
||
The tall, grand angels of the mosaics have neither wreaths nor
|
||
garlands. They have gained no crown because no strife has ever troubled
|
||
their serenity. They stand tall and straight, haloed, with spear-like
|
||
wands in their hands.
|
||
|
||
After the twelfth century, however, the apostles and martyrs no longer
|
||
carry the crown of victory, but it is the angels who wear wreaths,
|
||
usually wreaths of roses, which are the symbol of heavenly joy. And,
|
||
alas! what a lowering in type there was from the grand, dignified
|
||
beings who guard the throne of Mary, on the wall of S. Apollinare
|
||
Nuova, to the childish, peeping, rose-crowned little attendants which
|
||
crowd behind her chair in pictures of the Sienese, Umbrian and early
|
||
Florentine schools. The archangels still keep some dignity, but the
|
||
sweet little doll-like creatures, rose-crowned and golden-winged, of
|
||
Fra Angelico seem an inadequate representation of the hosts of Heaven.
|
||
|
||
But a magnificent strong-limbed angel of the Byzantine type would have
|
||
overshadowed the slight, transparent-fleshed Madonna whose physique
|
||
showed traces of the asceticism which went towards the making of a
|
||
saint. So the angels, denied grand and vigorous frames, were decked
|
||
with dainty robes and crowns of roses. Paul Bourget writes:
|
||
|
||
‘Ce double et contradictoire Idéal, celui d’une extase monastique
|
||
conquise dans le martyre des sens et celui d’une beauté qui parle
|
||
au sens, semble avoir co-existé dans le Pérugin et dans les
|
||
peintres qui l’ont précédé ou accompagné, particulièrement dans
|
||
Benedetto Bonfigli, dans Eusebio da San Giorgio, dans Giannicola
|
||
Manni et quelques autres dont la Pinacothèque de Pérouse enferme
|
||
les œuvres. Ce rêve complexe a son symbole dans les anges de
|
||
Bonfigli, couronnés de roses, comme les impies dont parle
|
||
l’Ecriture “Couronnons-nous de roses avant qu’elles ne soient
|
||
flétries,” comme les convives aussi des banquets paiens “Respirons
|
||
les roses tant qu’elles ressemblent à tes joues. Embrassons tes
|
||
joues tant qu’elles ressemblent à tes roses.” Mais ces pauvres
|
||
anges aux cheveux fleuris tiennent dans leurs mains les instruments
|
||
de la Passion du Sauveur, et une pitié douloureuse noie de rouge
|
||
leurs douces prunelles où roulent de grosses larmes.’[82]
|
||
|
||
But blissful souls as well as angels wear roses. In the Paradise of
|
||
Simone Martini,[83] Saint Peter with his key has opened the gate of
|
||
Heaven and two angels standing by crown with roses each soul as it
|
||
enters.
|
||
|
||
And more particularly those souls are crowned who in their earthly
|
||
life could rejoice in their faith even when overwhelmed with troubles.
|
||
Symbol of holy joy is the crown of roses which Saint Cecilia wears. Her
|
||
legend, like other legends of the Early Church, is both more poetic and
|
||
more allegorical than those which originated in later times.
|
||
|
||
Saint Cecilia lived in virginity with her husband Valerian, who,
|
||
through love of her, became a Christian and was baptized.
|
||
|
||
‘And returning home he found Cecilia in her chamber conversing with a
|
||
glittering angel ... and he held in his hand two crowns of roses and
|
||
lilies, and he gave one of them to Cecilia and the other to Valerian.
|
||
|
||
‘And on the morrow, when Tibertius came to salute his sister-in-law
|
||
Cecilia, he perceived an excellent odour of lilies and roses, and asked
|
||
her, wondering, whence she had untimely roses in the winter season.’
|
||
(That is, whence came her holy joy during the season of persecution.)
|
||
‘And Valerian answered that God had sent them crowns of roses and
|
||
lilies but that he could not see them till his eyes were opened and his
|
||
body purified’ (by baptism).
|
||
|
||
Then follows the account of the conversion of Tibertius and the deaths
|
||
of all three martyrs.
|
||
|
||
The ‘Second Nonne’ told the legend of the saint very prettily to the
|
||
Canterbury pilgrims:
|
||
|
||
‘Thou with thy gerlond wrought of rose and lilie
|
||
Thee, mene I, maid and martir Seint Cecilie.’
|
||
|
||
And her story appears to have been popular, though strangely enough she
|
||
has never ranked in popularity with Saint Margaret, Saint Catharine
|
||
of Alexandria, or Saint Barbara, notwithstanding that her story is
|
||
certainly better authenticated than theirs, the historical details of
|
||
her martyrdom having been proved beyond dispute. But she is essentially
|
||
a Roman saint, her body lying in Trastevere on practically the spot
|
||
where she suffered martyrdom under Marcus Aurelius, and with the
|
||
strange jealousy of Italian cities she was almost ignored by Siena,
|
||
Florence and Venice till Raphael, Roman in all his sympathies, painted
|
||
the fine picture now in Bologna. In this picture, where she appears as
|
||
the patroness of Music, she has no roses, but Luini[84] dresses her
|
||
head charmingly with white roses and anemones.
|
||
|
||
More fortunate than Saint Cecilia, Saint Dorothea is beloved in almost
|
||
all Christian countries, for coming from Cappadocia there could be
|
||
neither vauntings nor heart-burnings on her account in the Christian
|
||
cities of Europe. She too wears the roses of her legend.
|
||
|
||
‘Send me then some roses from the Paradise of your Christ,’ scoffed
|
||
the noble youth, Theophilus, as she passed to execution. At the moment
|
||
of death an angel appeared with three roses and three apples. ‘Take
|
||
them to Theophilus,’ said the saint, and Theophilus, believing, died a
|
||
martyr.[85]
|
||
|
||
Saint Dorothea is usually painted with both apples and roses, symbols
|
||
of the good works of a Christian life and of the holy joy even in the
|
||
hour of death, which, reported to Theophilus, astonished and finally
|
||
converted him. She is very popular both in the Low Countries and in
|
||
Germany. There is a charming triptych at Palermo, the best picture
|
||
Sicily possesses, attributed usually to Mabuse. On one wing Saint
|
||
Dorothea is depicted seated on the ground with her lap full of red and
|
||
white roses, a quaint, compact little figure, not a slender Italian
|
||
maiden, supported by angelic visions, already half in Heaven, but of
|
||
the sturdy Flemish type, who, having with clear brain calculated the
|
||
cost, sets herself with stoicism to endure the pain which would be
|
||
rewarded by the martyr’s crown of unfading roses.
|
||
|
||
Curiously enough, the Virgin’s crown is usually of gold and precious
|
||
stones, though in one of Velasquez’s rare religious pictures, ‘The
|
||
Coronation of the Virgin,’[86] God the Father places upon her head a
|
||
wreath of red and white rose blooms. In the best period of Italian art
|
||
the Virgin wears no crown except at a ‘Coronation,’ when most often it
|
||
is of gold. In Germany the crowns are large and heavily jewelled, and
|
||
in the Netherlands a jewelled fillet was very generally placed upon her
|
||
hair. A notable and beautiful exception to these fillet-like coronets
|
||
is the magnificent symbolical crown of jewels and fresh flowers which
|
||
she wears as Queen of Heaven in Hubert van Eyck’s ‘Adoration of the
|
||
Lamb.’[87] It was only in late art, that is, after the sixteenth
|
||
century, that representations of Mary with the Child in her arms, as
|
||
Queen of Heaven, or as ‘La Purissima,’ became common. Previously she
|
||
had been painted as a human mother with the sorrows of her motherhood
|
||
still upon her. As the mother, the greatest of whose seven sorrows has
|
||
not yet come, she would not yet carry the rose crown which symbolized
|
||
joy, even though it were heavenly joy, and by the time religious
|
||
sentiment demanded representations of Christ’s mother, risen to glory,
|
||
all sorrow past, the Church had decided to depict her as the woman
|
||
‘clothed with the sun and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’
|
||
|
||
Akin to the wreaths of roses worn by angels and saints are the hedges
|
||
and rose-trellises of Paradise.
|
||
|
||
Dante pictures Heaven as one great and marvellous rose-bloom:
|
||
|
||
‘How wide the leaves
|
||
Extended to the utmost, of this rose;[88]
|
||
...... which in bright expansiveness
|
||
Lays forth its gradual blooming, redolent
|
||
Of praises to the never wintering sun.’[89]
|
||
|
||
But the artists of the Church have usually depicted Heaven not as
|
||
a rose but as a rose-garden; and as a second and more perfect Eden
|
||
rather than as the Holy City, the stupendous piece of jeweller’s work
|
||
described in the Revelation of Saint John. A few Flemish and German
|
||
artists have attempted to realize the jasper wall, the ‘pure gold like
|
||
unto clear glass,’ and the ‘foundations garnished with all manner of
|
||
precious stones,’ but for the majority of artists on both sides of the
|
||
Alps Heaven was a paradise, a garden. The prophet Esdras describes it
|
||
in detail:
|
||
|
||
‘Twelve trees laden with divers fruits,
|
||
|
||
‘And as many fountains flowing with milk and honey, and seven mighty
|
||
mountains, whereupon there grow roses and lilies.’[90]
|
||
|
||
The Byzantine _Guide to Painting_[91] directs that Paradise be depicted
|
||
as ‘surrounded by a wall of crystal and pure gold, adorned with trees
|
||
filled with bright birds,’ so combining both visions of the home of the
|
||
blessed.
|
||
|
||
But Western art usually paints Heaven simply as a garden with twelve or
|
||
six fruit trees, little fertile mounts, and grass thick with flowers,
|
||
among which lilies and roses predominate.
|
||
|
||
The celestial meadow of Hubert van Eyck[92] has grouped trees as in
|
||
a park and bushes covered with roses, and there are roses on bushes
|
||
and trellises, crowns of roses and roses woven into swinging garlands
|
||
in that most alluring of all painted paradises set by Benozzo Gozzoli
|
||
upon the walls of the Palazzo Riccardi.[93] ‘Roses and pomegranates,
|
||
their leaves drawn to the last rib and vein, twine themselves in fair
|
||
and perfect order about delicate trellises; broad stone-pines and tall
|
||
cypresses overshadow them; bright birds hover here and there in the
|
||
serene sky; and groups of angels glide and float through the glades of
|
||
an entangled forest.’[94]
|
||
|
||
It is a paradise after the own heart of a Medici, in which no monotony,
|
||
no boredom need be apprehended, full of gay and witty folk and the most
|
||
gorgeous angels that were ever seen.
|
||
|
||
The roses of Paradise must not be confused with the rose hedge
|
||
or trellis so often placed behind the Virgin by the early German
|
||
schools. These hedges indicate the ‘Hortus Conclusus’ and identify
|
||
the Virgin with the bride of the Canticles by recalling the verse, ‘A
|
||
garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse.’ This enclosure is sometimes
|
||
fenced merely by a row of flowers, sometimes by a fortress-wall, and
|
||
is often an elaborate garden. An early instance by a master of the
|
||
Middle Rhine,[95] dating from about 1420, gives eighteen recognizable
|
||
species of flowers and ten varieties of birds. The Madonna sits reading
|
||
beneath a tree. One saint gathers cherries and another draws water
|
||
from a fountain. Saint George, Saint Michael and a young man chat
|
||
beneath a tree, and a pretty young saint with flowers in her hair
|
||
teaches the little Christ to play the psaltery. Other gardens contain
|
||
no flowers but the various objects used as similes of the Virgin--the
|
||
Tower of Ivory, the Closed Door, the Sealed Fountain, etc. Very often
|
||
there is merely a trellis with roses climbing up it, and the flowers
|
||
which express the virtues of Mary, the lily, violet and strawberry,
|
||
grow at her feet. The thorns on the roses are carefully drawn, even
|
||
accentuated, illustrating the verse, ‘As a lily among thorns, so is my
|
||
love among the daughters;’[96] but in spite of the thorns the general
|
||
significance of these roses also is joy and delight.
|
||
|
||
In the Netherlands, where theologians occupied themselves less with
|
||
this second chapter of the Song of Solomon, Madonnas set _en plein air_
|
||
are scarcely found. The van Eycks and Memling inaugurated the fashion
|
||
of arranging their devotional groups in chapel-like niches, or in
|
||
the aisle of some large church. Any garden there is seen in glimpses
|
||
between pillars or through windows, and has no mystical meaning.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Stefano da Zevio_ _Photo Anderson_
|
||
|
||
THE ‘ENCLOSED GARDEN’ OF THE VIRGIN
|
||
|
||
(Royal Museum, Verona)]
|
||
|
||
In the work of Botticelli and his school we again see enclosed gardens
|
||
of roses, but these are rather gardens of adoration, for in the centre
|
||
the Virgin kneels before the divine Infant. As in all Adorations the
|
||
symbolism refers to the Child, and these roses symbolize the Divine
|
||
Love which sent Him to this earth, and are not the attributes of Mary
|
||
or an indication of the joy in Heaven. A true _hortus conclusus_
|
||
of Italian origin is that of Stefano da Zevio or da Verona.[97]
|
||
The Virgin, with the Child upon her knee, sits upon the ground in a
|
||
carefully walled in garden, of which the only other human occupant is
|
||
Saint Catharine, who strings a crown of roses. The garden is full of
|
||
birds and bird-like angels, and in one corner is the ‘sealed fountain’
|
||
of the Canticles.
|
||
|
||
As a general rule, roses massed together, in garlands, in baskets, or
|
||
thickly growing, are the symbols of heavenly joys, and single roses
|
||
are the symbols of divine love. But there is one single rose which is
|
||
also the symbol of joy--it is the golden rose which is the gift of the
|
||
Popes. Durandus writes: ‘So also on the Sunday, Lœtare Jerusalem, the
|
||
Roman Pontiff beareth a mitre, beautified with the orfrey, on account
|
||
of the joy which the golden rose signifieth, but on account of the time
|
||
being one of sadness, he weareth black vestments.[98]
|
||
|
||
‘St Leon is seen upon the _châsse_ of Charlemagne[99] with the golden
|
||
rose in his right hand. The golden rose being the image of Heaven,
|
||
according to the Liturgy, it became, in the hands of the Pope, the
|
||
equivalent of a benediction. One remarks that, in the epoch of which
|
||
we speak, the very poetical rite of the golden rose, most ancient in
|
||
the Church, had just acquired a new celebrity. The sending of the
|
||
symbolical flower had replaced, in the Roman court, that of the keys
|
||
of confession, and Innocent III had just consecrated a discourse to
|
||
explain its mysterious signification.’[100]
|
||
|
||
The sending of the golden rose was a very old custom, dating at least
|
||
from the time of Gregory the Great. The rose was solemnly blessed
|
||
by the Pope on the fourth Sunday in Lent and sent by him to some
|
||
sovereign, church or community. Urban V first made the ceremony annual
|
||
about 1366.
|
||
|
||
This rose, symbol of the Church’s blessing, was often a thing of beauty
|
||
and fine workmanship. Stefano del Cambio describes that one which was
|
||
sent in his time to Florence.
|
||
|
||
‘On Easter Sunday morning, the 2nd of April 1419, Pope Martin V,
|
||
after having performed Mass, gave the golden rose to our magnificent
|
||
Signoria, in remembrance of the honours paid him by the Florentine
|
||
people.... Our Signoria then returned to their palace with all the
|
||
court of Cardinals and Prelates and the afore-said rose bush, which
|
||
was a golden branch with leaves of fine gold. On it were nine roses,
|
||
and a little bud on top of the nine, which contained spices, myrrh and
|
||
balsam.’[101]
|
||
|
||
Sometimes the ‘rose’ was a whole rose bush about two feet high and
|
||
covered with leaves and flowers. Two such bushes, one thornless, the
|
||
gift of Pope Alexander VII, and the other, with long sharp thorns,
|
||
though curved harmlessly downward, presented by Pius II, are still
|
||
treasured by grateful Siena.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
VIII
|
||
|
||
THE COLUMBINE
|
||
|
||
|
||
We read in Isaiah: ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of
|
||
Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the
|
||
Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
|
||
Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of
|
||
the Lord.’[102]
|
||
|
||
‘These words were addressed to the Messiah. The Divine Child was
|
||
therefore clothed with the Spirit of God, whose faculties are seven in
|
||
number, for He possesses as His peculiar gifts, wisdom, understanding,
|
||
counsel, strength, knowledge, piety and fear.
|
||
|
||
‘This subject has frequently been portrayed by Christian artists. A
|
||
tree springs from the bowels, the breast or the mouth of Jesse. The
|
||
symbolic trunk spreads to the left and right, throwing forth branches
|
||
bearing the Kings of Judah, the ancestors of Christ; at the top,
|
||
seated on a throne, or the chalice of a gigantic flower, is the Son of
|
||
God. Surrounding the Saviour, and forming as it were an oval aureole,
|
||
seven doves are ranged one above the other, three on the left, three
|
||
on the right, and one at the top.... These doves, which are of snowy
|
||
whiteness, like the Holy Ghost, and adorned like him with a cruciform
|
||
nimbus, are simply living manifestations of the seven gifts of the
|
||
Spirit. The Holy Ghost is drawn under the form of a dove; each of
|
||
the seven energies distinguishing Him is also figured under the same
|
||
type.’[103]
|
||
|
||
These little doves surrounding the figure of Christ, as a man or as
|
||
an infant, occur very frequently in the French miniatures of the
|
||
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and are found upon the windows in
|
||
the cathedrals of S. Denis, Chartres, Amiens and Beauvais, and in many
|
||
other French churches.
|
||
|
||
It was an essentially French development of Christian symbolism,
|
||
and it is in Flemish art, which drew its inspiration from the French
|
||
Renaissance, that we first find, not the little white doves, but
|
||
the columbine flower. The columbine grows wild in most countries of
|
||
Europe and is usually dark blue in colour. Each of its five petals is
|
||
so shaped that it is really very like a little long-necked dove. The
|
||
little doves are only five in number, but the Flemish painters take
|
||
each flower, not each petal, as the symbol, and give seven blooms upon
|
||
each plant. There are six, and the edge of the seventh is just showing,
|
||
in the mystical crown worn by Hubert van Eyck’s ‘Queen of Heaven.’[104]
|
||
|
||
Strictly speaking, however, Mary has no right to these symbols of
|
||
the gifts of the Spirit, for it was to the expected Messiah that the
|
||
divine gifts were promised. The columbine is more correctly used by
|
||
Hugo van der Goes, who in his ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’[105] places
|
||
a columbine, with seven flowers upon it, in a vase before the Infant
|
||
Saviour.
|
||
|
||
The seven gifts of the Spirit are according to Isaiah:
|
||
|
||
SAPIENTIA
|
||
INTELLECTUS
|
||
CONSILIUM
|
||
FORTITUDO
|
||
SCIENTIA
|
||
PIETAS
|
||
TIMOR.
|
||
|
||
And according to the Apocalypse:
|
||
|
||
VIRTUS
|
||
DIVINITAS (in the Vulgate)
|
||
SAPIENTIA
|
||
FORTITUDO
|
||
HONOR
|
||
GLORIA
|
||
BENEDICIO.
|
||
|
||
But, at the Renaissance, Faith, Hope and Charity were taken as the
|
||
theological virtues, and to them were added the four moral virtues
|
||
exalted in pagan times above all others, namely, Prudence, Justice,
|
||
Temperance and Strength.[106]
|
||
|
||
In a picture by Jörg Breu of the Virgin with the Child and two
|
||
saints,[107] a vase of columbine, the only flowers introduced, is
|
||
placed in the foreground just below the Child, who stands on His
|
||
Mother’s knee.
|
||
|
||
Beside the vase is a sort of casket, out of which seven little cupid
|
||
angels take seven scrolls. On the respective scrolls are inscribed:
|
||
FIDES, SPES, CHARITAS, JUSTICIA, PRUDENCIA, FORTES. The seventh is
|
||
blank, reserved, perhaps, for TEMPERANCE. A crowned saint, seated
|
||
beside the Virgin, holds upon her knee a scroll on which is written
|
||
‘AVE REGINA,’ and above the Virgin’s head hover two _putti_ with a
|
||
heavy crown. It is therefore to the Mother, rather than to the Child,
|
||
that devotion is directed, and the seven Gifts are to be taken as her
|
||
attribute.
|
||
|
||
In 1475 the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ by Hugo van der Goes was
|
||
brought to Florence by Tommaso Portinari, for the Chapel of the
|
||
Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. Its technique excited the greatest
|
||
interest among the artists of Italy, and the vase of columbine in the
|
||
foreground may have first drawn their attention to this symbol. Cosimo
|
||
Rosselli, perhaps the last of the Florentine symbolists, painted it
|
||
among the daisies, strawberries and jasmine-shaped flower in the
|
||
‘Madonna with the Child and SS. Peter and James,’[108] commissioned
|
||
in 1492. After the fifteenth century it is fairly frequent in Italian
|
||
art. Two of the most charming of the Madonna pictures now in the Brera,
|
||
‘The Virgin and Child with the Lamb,’ by Sodoma, and ‘The Virgin of the
|
||
Rose-hedge,’ by Luini, both introduce the columbine. But the Italian
|
||
artists use it vaguely, as the flower of the dove, the flower in
|
||
some degree sacred to the Holy Ghost, and lost sight of the original
|
||
connection with the seven Gifts of the Spirit. Luini, who is careless
|
||
with his symbolism, though painting flowers exquisitely, uses the
|
||
columbine also as an accessory in the famous portrait known as ‘La
|
||
Colombina,’[109] but here, of course, it is simply a graceful flower in
|
||
the hand of a fine woman.
|
||
|
||
It is most unusual to find any flower used symbolically in scenes
|
||
representing the Passion of our Lord. Should plants or shrubs be there,
|
||
it is merely as an indication that the place of Crucifixion was beyond
|
||
the walls, and that the place of burial was a garden. They have no
|
||
special meanings as symbols. An exception is the ‘Entombment’[110] of
|
||
Hans Schüchlin of Ulm. From a rock in the foreground springs a plant
|
||
of columbine with three drooping flowers. On a smaller plant at the
|
||
side are four more blossoms, making up the mystic seven. There are only
|
||
these columbines and a little short grass. On the step of the tomb lies
|
||
the crown of thorns which has fallen from the head of the dead Saviour
|
||
as the disciples lower His body to the grave.
|
||
|
||
The seven blooms of the columbine appear again in the Thomas-altar[111]
|
||
by the master of the Bartholomew-altar, who painted during the first
|
||
twenty years of the sixteenth century. It is a disagreeable picture,
|
||
the types poor and the action of the doubting Thomas, as he thrusts
|
||
his hand into the Saviour’s wound, distinctly brutal. But all round
|
||
the feet of the risen Saviour lie flowers scattered on the broad stone
|
||
step. There are again the seven heads of the columbine, snapped off
|
||
short and showing scarcely any stalk; there are the violets of humility
|
||
and the daisy, often seen with the violet as the symbol of perfect
|
||
innocence in Adorations of the Infant Christ, but rare when He is
|
||
represented as a grown man. There is also the strawberry flower but not
|
||
the fruit.
|
||
|
||
After the sixteenth century the columbine seems to have dropped from
|
||
Christian symbolism, and in modern religious art it has no place.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
IX
|
||
|
||
THE OLIVE
|
||
|
||
|
||
‘Strew thrice nine olive boughs
|
||
On either hand; and offer up thy prayer,’[112]
|
||
|
||
counselled the Greeks when conscious that the deities were offended.
|
||
|
||
The olive was the gift of Pallas. The tale ran that in the reign of
|
||
Cecrops both Poseidon and Athena contended for the possession of
|
||
Athens. The gods resolved that whichever of them produced the gift
|
||
most useful to mortals should have possession of the land. Poseidon
|
||
struck the ground with his trident and straightway a horse appeared.
|
||
But Athena planted the olive and the gods thereupon decreed that the
|
||
olive was more useful to man than the horse, and gave the city to the
|
||
goddess, from whom it was called Athenæ.[113]
|
||
|
||
But the symbolism of the olive, founded upon its healing qualities and
|
||
its oil’s well-known property of calming roughened water, was not only
|
||
Grecian: it was wide-spread, and the Romans used it politically as well
|
||
as religiously. Their heralds carried olive on an embassy of peace, and
|
||
the custom lingered in Italy through the Middle Ages; Dante describing
|
||
how the multitude ‘Flock round the herald sent with olive branch.’
|
||
|
||
In Christian art the olive also invariably represents peace or
|
||
reconciliation, and it is first found in the Catacombs, where there
|
||
is a curious painting of the mystic fish which swims towards the
|
||
Cross with a sprig of olive in its mouth. The fish, by the well-known
|
||
anagram, represents Christ, who, through the Cross, brings peace on
|
||
earth.
|
||
|
||
A dove with an olive twig in its beak is also found upon early
|
||
Christian tombs. And then, as Tertullian says, ‘it is a symbol of peace
|
||
even older than Christianity itself’[114]--the herald of the peace of
|
||
God from the very beginning. Sometimes the word itself, ‘Pax,’[115] is
|
||
added, thereby marking the sense beyond all possibility of dispute;
|
||
viz., that it is meant to assert of the soul of the deceased that it
|
||
has departed in the peace of God and of his Church.[116]
|
||
|
||
Tertullian refers, of course, to the dove sent forth by Noah which
|
||
returned across the waters, and ‘Lo! in her mouth was an olive leaf
|
||
plucked off,’ sign that the wrath of God was appeased. The dove,
|
||
bearing the twig of olive, executed in coloured marbles, occurs
|
||
repeatedly in the decoration of Saint Peter’s. Here the dove represents
|
||
the Church bearing the Gospel message of peace to the world. The same
|
||
emblem is found in the decoration of St John Lateran, and Pope Innocent
|
||
X. incorporated it with his coat of arms.
|
||
|
||
The olive naturally appears as an attribute in allegorical figures
|
||
of Peace. One of the earliest and most famous of these figures is in
|
||
Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s great fresco entitled ‘Good Government.’[117] The
|
||
golden-haired Peace, who wears a white robe, is crowned with olive, and
|
||
carries an olive branch in her hand. She has a beauty of her own, but
|
||
compared with the more virile figures in the composition, Fortitude,
|
||
Prudence, Temperance and Justice, she is a little heavy and inert, a
|
||
little wanting in interest, as the citizens perhaps would have found
|
||
their daily life were they condemned to days of peace.
|
||
|
||
In small, fierce Siena the olive was a very favourite symbol and found
|
||
more frequently than any other. One of the most curious characteristics
|
||
of religious art is the inexactitude with which it reflects a people’s
|
||
mood, for the ideal upon the wall above the altar is often just
|
||
precisely that to which they do not strive. When the Medici were in
|
||
power and Florentine social life was at its worldliest, simplicity and
|
||
purity, almost austerity, were demanded of the artist, and the lily
|
||
was the favourite symbol. Murillo painted Madonnas to the Church’s
|
||
order, sweet and forgiving, kind to indulgence, almost voluptuous, at a
|
||
moment when not only the devotions of Jews and heretics but the private
|
||
life of every citizen of Seville was under stern control. And in
|
||
Seville, with inquisitorial fires blazing, the Virgin had as attribute
|
||
the rose of love and charity. So the turbulent Sienese, who, when no
|
||
enemy knocked at the gates, fought with one another, loved a still and
|
||
peaceful art. It was conservative, for they cared for no novelty, no
|
||
variety of subject, pose or action. And their favourite symbol was the
|
||
olive branch of peace. The angel Gabriel almost invariably carries
|
||
olive,[118] Saint John the Evangelist[119] and Saint Ansano,[120] their
|
||
own saint, both hold branches of it, and it crowns the blonde curls of
|
||
many a little angel.
|
||
|
||
In representations of the first and third persons of the Holy Trinity
|
||
the olive branch is very rare. Upon some ancient crucifixes, however,
|
||
where a hand holding a wreath represents the Eternal Father, the
|
||
wreath, though usually of laurel, in some instances is formed of
|
||
olive. In the Crucifix of the tenth century, known as the Crucifix of
|
||
Lothair,[121] the wreath is distinctly of olive, but since it encircles
|
||
the Holy Dove the olive is perhaps equally the attribute of the Holy
|
||
Ghost. In the Crucifix upon the Manual of Prayer of Charles the
|
||
Bald,[122] the wreath is of laurel and there is no dove.
|
||
|
||
Mabillon speaks of a group of the Trinity in human form, sculptured
|
||
by order of Abelard at the Paraclete. In it the Father wore a closed
|
||
crown, the Son a crown of thorns, and the Holy Ghost a crown of olive.
|
||
The group has long since disappeared, and there seems no other instance
|
||
of the Holy Ghost in human form being represented with the olive. A
|
||
dove bearing an olive twig could not be an emblem of the Holy Ghost
|
||
unless the bird’s head were encircled with a halo.
|
||
|
||
But Christian art uses the ancient symbol of peace repeatedly when
|
||
illustrating Christ’s life upon earth. First we find the angel Gabriel
|
||
bringing to the Virgin a branch of olive as token that his message is
|
||
of peace. Sometimes he is also crowned with olive. He comes crowned
|
||
with peace, and the branch in his hand foreshadows the reconciliation
|
||
between God and man which is to come by the Child whose advent he
|
||
announces.
|
||
|
||
The olive branch took precedence of the lily as the symbol carried by
|
||
the announcing angel. Originated probably by Simone Martini, one of its
|
||
earliest instances is in his Annunciation now in the Uffizi. In the
|
||
Florentine school the simple stick carried by the herald angel evolved,
|
||
as we have seen, through the fleur-de-lys to the stem of lilies. In
|
||
Siena it was the meaning of the wand, rather than the wand itself,
|
||
which was developed. The wand simply marked that Gabriel was a herald;
|
||
that it was a message of peace and goodwill which he brought was shown
|
||
by the grey-green leaves of the olive. As a symbol it was by no means
|
||
of Simone Martini’s own finding, for it was a very usual political
|
||
symbol of the day, but he seems to have been the first to have placed
|
||
it in the angel Gabriel’s hand, and the school of painting in Siena
|
||
whole-heartedly and faithfully adopted his device. The general trend
|
||
of Sienese symbolism was to direct devotion to the incarnate Godhead
|
||
rather than to Mary of Nazareth, and it is of Him, as the bringer of
|
||
peace on earth, that the branch of olive tells, as elsewhere the white
|
||
lily proclaims the virginity of the coming motherhood.
|
||
|
||
Then again, on that night when the angels sang of peace on earth and
|
||
goodwill towards men--
|
||
|
||
... ‘the meek-eyed Peace,
|
||
She crown’d with Olive green, came softly sliding
|
||
Down through the turning sphear.’[123]
|
||
|
||
In one of the most naïve and fascinating of all Botticelli’s
|
||
pictures[124] the angels crowned with olive hold up branches of it
|
||
against the golden sky. Other angels, half distraught with joy, run
|
||
with waving olive-sprays to greet the astonished shepherds.
|
||
|
||
The same subject is much more soberly treated by Sano di Pietro.[125]
|
||
One angel, flying through the twilight, brings a twig of olive to the
|
||
shepherd who is sleeping on the hillside.
|
||
|
||
There are many symbolical fruits placed in the hand of the Infant
|
||
Christ. Botticelli paints a pomegranate, Mabuse a quince, Memling an
|
||
apple, Il Moretto a pear, and each represents the individual artist’s
|
||
conviction as to what really was the unnamed fruit of the Tree of the
|
||
Knowledge of Good and Evil which grew in the midst of Eden. The placing
|
||
of the olive, symbol of reconciliation, where it might be confused
|
||
with the fatal fruit which made that reconciliation so imperative was
|
||
carefully avoided, and we rarely find the olive branch in the hand
|
||
of the Child when seated on His mother’s knee. And there was still
|
||
another reason. He had Himself said: ‘I come not to bring peace upon
|
||
earth, but the sword,’ therefore the earlier and more literal artists
|
||
refused Him the symbol of peace, even as divine peace. There are,
|
||
however, instances of the Christ-Child with the olive branch, of which
|
||
the most important is the ‘Holy Family’ by Mantegna.[126] The Christ,
|
||
a beautiful and dignified childish figure of three or four years old,
|
||
stands on a sort of pedestal with the little Saint John. He holds a
|
||
branch of olive in His right hand, upright like a sceptre, and in the
|
||
other is the crystal orb which symbolizes sovereignty. Saint Joseph
|
||
stands behind and the Virgin lays a rosebud at her Son’s feet.
|
||
|
||
The Bringer of Divine Peace was an aspect of the incarnate Son of God
|
||
on which Mantegna laid emphasis. In the ‘Holy Family,’ now in Dresden,
|
||
painted about the same period, the little Saint John holds a branch of
|
||
olive (from which two tiny side-sprays grow naturally in the form of a
|
||
cross) as an attribute of the Holy Child.
|
||
|
||
The olive branches of the ‘Entry into Jerusalem,’ like the olives of
|
||
Gethsemane, were only accidentally allegorical. The villagers of the
|
||
Mount of Olives cut down branches (presumably olive branches) ‘and
|
||
strewed them in the way.’ With palm branches they would salute any
|
||
popular leader, and it is scarcely to be believed that they definitely
|
||
selected the olive and palm with the full understanding of the
|
||
symbolism which the Christian Church attaches to them.
|
||
|
||
‘The olive branches signify his office as peace-bringer and the palms
|
||
his victory over Satan.’[127]
|
||
|
||
There is in the Catacombs a figure of the Virgin Mary praying between
|
||
two olive trees. Her name is inscribed above her head. She is standing
|
||
with raised hands in the early attitude of prayer, and these olive
|
||
trees apparently symbolize ‘the peace of God which passeth all
|
||
understanding.’ But after the twelfth century the Church had identified
|
||
the personality of the Virgin with the figure of Wisdom eulogized in
|
||
Ecclesiasticus, and the olives which are sometimes found beside her
|
||
refer to the verse which compares her to
|
||
|
||
‘A fair olive tree in a pleasant field.’[128]
|
||
|
||
Botticelli painted a beautiful ‘Madonna of the Olives’ for the Church
|
||
of S. Spirito. Vasari writes of it: ‘In S. Spirito in Florence he
|
||
has painted a picture for the Chapel of the Bardi which is carefully
|
||
executed and well finished, where there are some olives and palms
|
||
painted with great love.’[129] In another picture by Botticelli[130]
|
||
angels hold above the Virgin’s head a lightly-framed crown of gold
|
||
which is decorated with fresh sprays of lily, palm and olive.
|
||
|
||
The most popular of modern Italian representations of the Virgin and
|
||
Child is very justly that painted by Niccolò Barabino[131] and entitled
|
||
‘_Quasi Oliva Speciosa in Campis_.’ Large branches of olive, painted
|
||
also ‘with great love,’ are placed about the feet of the sweet-faced
|
||
Mother, who peeps through her heavy white veil, and they almost hide
|
||
the fruit of temptation which lies on the ground beneath.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Martin Schöngauer_
|
||
|
||
GABRIEL CROWNED WITH OLIVE BRINGS THE MESSAGE OF RECONCILIATION
|
||
|
||
(Print Room, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]
|
||
|
||
One of the _putti_ which fly round the feet of the Madonna in a Spanish
|
||
‘Immaculate Conception’ usually carries a branch of olive, and that,
|
||
too, bears the same meaning. As an olive tree in a pleasant field she
|
||
brings peace and consolation to mankind. She is the ‘Mater Consolatrix.’
|
||
|
||
Sodoma painted a stately figure of Saint Victor,[132] with sword and
|
||
palm, and the little rose-crowned child-angel who supports his shield
|
||
holds above it a branch of olive, symbol of the peace which to a
|
||
Christian warrior should be the end of victory.
|
||
|
||
The same idea dominates the ‘Judith’[133] of Botticelli. The slayer
|
||
of her country’s enemy returns thoughtfully home, satisfied but not
|
||
exultant. In her right hand is her sword, carried low; upright, in her
|
||
left, a branch of olive. Though her deed was bloody, she had brought
|
||
peace to the land.
|
||
|
||
Flemish art neglects the olive, and except in the drawings of Martin
|
||
Schöngauer,[134] whose grave gentle Gabriels wear olive crowns, it is
|
||
seldom seen in Germany. The reason is easy to guess. The olive tree
|
||
not growing in the North, the painters would be at a loss to find a
|
||
branch from which to draw, and the people, unacquainted with the leaf,
|
||
would scarcely recognize its hidden message of peace. In France it is
|
||
seen less rarely. On the sculptured portal of the Cathedral of Amiens
|
||
there is a curious rendering of the parable of the Wise and the Foolish
|
||
Virgins. A withered olive tree, without fruit or leaves, grows by the
|
||
side of the foolish maidens, and a healthy olive tree, laden with fruit
|
||
and ready with abundance of oil, is beside those maidens who were wise.
|
||
|
||
But on the whole the olive is an Italian, and more particularly a
|
||
Sienese, symbol, though Botticelli also loved the silvery leaves. In
|
||
his magnificent ‘Pallas taming the Centaur,’[135] painted for Lorenzo
|
||
de’ Medici, to commemorate his diplomatic victory over the King of
|
||
Naples and the League in 1480, olive encircles the head of the lovely
|
||
goddess and is wreathed about her dress. The surface meaning of the
|
||
picture is that, by the arts of peace taught them by the beneficent
|
||
goddess, men were enabled to overcome the savagery of nature, typified
|
||
by the centaur. But it also shows, allegorically, how the wise
|
||
statesmanship of Lorenzo (with whose badge, rings interlaced, the gown
|
||
of Pallas is ‘semé’) guided the war-loving League, here figured as the
|
||
centaur, into the ways of Peace.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
X
|
||
|
||
THORNS
|
||
|
||
|
||
Thorns and thorn branches signify in general grief and tribulation,
|
||
the word tribulation itself being derived from a Latin root signifying
|
||
thistles or briars. But, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, thorn
|
||
bushes signify the minor sins, and growing briars or brambles those
|
||
greater ones, ‘quæ pungunt conscientiam propriam,’ etc.
|
||
|
||
He is supported in his opinion by Saint Anselm, and both saints explain
|
||
in this sense the words of Saint Paul, who wrote to the Hebrews:
|
||
|
||
‘That which beareth thorns and briars is rejected and is nigh unto
|
||
cursing, whose end is to be burned.’
|
||
|
||
The crown of thorns with which jesting soldiers crowned the Christ
|
||
was in itself an emblem, or at least a parody, of an emperor’s festal
|
||
rose-crown. According to _The History of the Crown of Thorns of the
|
||
Holy One_,[136] the first crown with which Jesus Christ was crowned was
|
||
made of white-thorn and was removed before the Crucifixion and replaced
|
||
by a second _de juncis marinis_.
|
||
|
||
But in the great majority of scenes from the Passion the crown is
|
||
merely formed of large thorns without any attempt to realize any
|
||
particular natural growth. In Germany, where Entombments and Pietàs
|
||
were more often painted than in other countries, the crown is
|
||
frequently green, in allusion, it is suggested, to the words: ‘If these
|
||
things be done in the green wood, what shall be done in the dry?’
|
||
|
||
In these pictures the crown of thorns, if not still upon the Saviour’s
|
||
head, is usually placed very prominently in the foreground, marking to
|
||
some extent the divinity of the dead Christ, for, since life had fled,
|
||
there could be no halo.
|
||
|
||
In Northern art the crown of thorns remains always unchanged, the
|
||
symbol of Christ’s sufferings, but in at least one Italian Pietà,[137]
|
||
the dry prickles round the dead Christ’s brow have bloomed with
|
||
delicate white briar-roses--an exquisite figure of Love’s triumph over
|
||
Pain.
|
||
|
||
Sometimes, in pathetic forecast, the Child Christ has the crown of
|
||
thorns hung on His tiny wrist[138] or plays with it as with a toy, and
|
||
in a very charming picture,[139] with less poignant and more pleasing
|
||
symbolism, a waiting child-angel stands by with a wreath of the blue
|
||
sea-holly.
|
||
|
||
In Spain the Christian faith was stern. Faith and suffering were more
|
||
closely allied than faith and joy. They had no ‘jesters of the Lord,’
|
||
and their saints glorified God by self-inflicted pain rather than
|
||
by acts of mercy. So their Christ in childhood was not a smiling,
|
||
unconscious _bambino_, but a sad-faced child who wounds Himself with
|
||
the rose-twigs which He twists into a crown. The rose-thorn tears His
|
||
flesh but the roses lie beside Him and round His feet, for His griefs
|
||
and sufferings were the outcome of His divine love. Both Zurburan[140]
|
||
and Alonzo Cano[141] painted fine pictures on this theme.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Zurburan_ _Photo Anderson_
|
||
|
||
THE CROWN OF THORNS
|
||
|
||
(Museo Provinciale, Seville)]
|
||
|
||
There is a ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ by Hans Burgkmair,[142] painted
|
||
in 1507, where beneath a cross-surmounted imperial crown Christ wears
|
||
the Crown of Thorns. In several of the French fifteenth-century
|
||
miniatures of the Trinity in Glory, God the Son still wears the Crown
|
||
of Thorns, but this combination of the two crowns is rare. It was,
|
||
however, in reverent remembrance of the thorn-crowned King of the Jews
|
||
that the Crusader, Godfrey de Bouillon, twisted a thorn-branch round
|
||
his coronet when he was crowned King of Jerusalem. His bronze statue,
|
||
wearing this double crown, stands with those of the other Christian
|
||
kings guarding the tomb of Maximilian in Innsbruck Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
Among modern symbolists, Holman Hunt has used thorns with finest
|
||
effect. In his ‘Light of the World’ the Saviour wears again the double
|
||
crown, the thorns which symbolize His sufferings intertwisted with the
|
||
golden crown of His divinity. He stands with the lantern, which is
|
||
the light of His Gospel, before the closed door of the human heart, a
|
||
door all overgrown and blocked by the weeds and briars which are the
|
||
symbols of sin and things evil. There is the poisonous hemlock, the ivy
|
||
which kills the tree that it embraces, thorns denoting the lesser sins,
|
||
and the brambles which are the emblems of the greater ones. According
|
||
to Raban Maur the bramble is also an emblem of the riches which destroy
|
||
the soul.
|
||
|
||
In several modern pictures of ‘The Good Shepherd’ Christ is depicted
|
||
as rescuing a lamb caught by its wool in the briars of the wilderness.
|
||
The lamb, of course, is the emblem of an erring soul, and the briars
|
||
represent those sins which hold it back from answering the Shepherd’s
|
||
call.
|
||
|
||
In connection with the saints, the Crown of Thorns is not used
|
||
symbolically, except when placed upon the head of Saint Catharine of
|
||
Siena,[143] to indicate her austerities. According to the legend,
|
||
Christ in a vision offered her a crown of roses or a crown of thorns
|
||
and she chose the thorns. When it is carried by Saint Louis of France
|
||
it is to recall the fact that it was he who brought to France, as her
|
||
most precious relic, the Holy Crown itself.
|
||
|
||
The tonsure was originally instituted to keep fresh in the memory the
|
||
Saviour’s Crown of Thorns. And in the ‘Paradise’ of Fra Angelico[144]
|
||
the monks are crowned with roses. Thus the emblem reverted to the
|
||
original symbol. The Crown of Thorns was the parody of the rose-crown,
|
||
symbol of rejoicing; the tonsure the reverent imitation of the thorny
|
||
wreath, and angels at the entrance of Paradise change the tonsure for a
|
||
wreath of roses.
|
||
|
||
In early German art the Virgin is often found seated in a garden of
|
||
which each flower has its significance. Behind and around her there
|
||
is usually a sort of trellis or bower covered with roses. The roses
|
||
have very pronounced thorns, and the thorns are accentuated to recall
|
||
that Mary is the lily and the bride of the Canticles, the ‘Lily among
|
||
thorns.’ In an Assumption of Seghers[145] one of the attendant _putti_
|
||
flies towards her with a single lily enclosed in branches covered with
|
||
long-spiked thorns.
|
||
|
||
On the other hand, when the rose is the direct emblem, not the
|
||
attribute of the Madonna, it has no thorns, for then it illustrates
|
||
her title, ‘_rosa sine spina_.’
|
||
|
||
The Roman Breviary likens the Virgin to the burning thorn bush in
|
||
which Jehovah revealed Himself to Moses and the simile was cited
|
||
by Bishop Proclus in a Mary-sermon preached in the fifth century.
|
||
Though enwrapped in the all-consuming flame of divine love, she yet
|
||
remains unharmed. It is only in German art that this simile has been
|
||
pictorially translated. German artists were familiar with the idea
|
||
through Conrad von Würtzburg’s apostrophe to the Virgin:
|
||
|
||
‘In the thorn bush on the bare field
|
||
Moses, the hero of God
|
||
Saw in a glow of bright fire
|
||
The birth of our Saviour foreshadowed.
|
||
In the blast of the flame
|
||
It remained unaltered
|
||
As if neither leaf nor twig
|
||
Perceived the death-giving blaze.
|
||
In this we may recognize
|
||
The full magnificence of thy maidenhood.’[146]
|
||
|
||
And we find this burning Thorn Bush with the Ivory Tower, the Sealed
|
||
Fountain, the Fleece of Gideon and other emblems of the Virgin, in
|
||
the fifteenth-century renderings of the _Hortus Inclusus_ and in the
|
||
background of the essentially German allegory of the Incarnation, known
|
||
as the ‘Hunting of the Unicorn.’ There are some fine embroideries and
|
||
tapestries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Bavarian
|
||
National Museum,[147] in which the burning thorn bush, with the other
|
||
symbols of the Virgin’s purity, are worked with most careful detail.
|
||
|
||
The burning bush, not particularly a thorn bush, but the ‘bush’ of our
|
||
Authorized Version, is now the chosen emblem of the Church of Scotland.
|
||
|
||
There were neither thorns nor thistles in Eden. It was not till the day
|
||
when Adam fell that God laid a curse upon the ground: ‘Thorns also and
|
||
thistles shall it bring forth to thee.’ Therefore thorns and thistles
|
||
are in general the symbols of sin and death. A little German woodcut
|
||
expresses eternal death with gruesome completeness: a skull, with the
|
||
apple of damnation between its bare jaws, has round its brow a wreath
|
||
of twisted thorns.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XI
|
||
|
||
THE PALM
|
||
|
||
|
||
The Romans took palms for their symbol of Victory. There is a
|
||
sarcophagus in the Vatican on which is carved a Roman conqueror with
|
||
captive barbarians kneeling before him, and the winged Victory who
|
||
crowns him with laurel holds a palm in her left hand.
|
||
|
||
Simon Maccabees, after he had taken the Tower of Jerusalem, entered it
|
||
‘with thanksgiving, and branches of palm trees and with harps.’[148]
|
||
And the seers of Scripture saw palms in heaven: ‘A great multitude,
|
||
which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds and people, and
|
||
tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb clothed with white
|
||
robes, and palms in their hands.’[149] ‘These be they that have put off
|
||
the mortal clothing and put on the immortal, and have confessed the
|
||
name of God; now are they crowned and receive palms.’[150]
|
||
|
||
Palms were therefore the meed of martyrdom, the symbol of the martyrs’
|
||
victory over death.
|
||
|
||
‘... The angel said
|
||
God liketh thy request,
|
||
And bothe with the palme of martirdome,
|
||
Ye shallen come unto His blissful rest.’[151]
|
||
|
||
During the first three centuries of Christianity Christian art
|
||
concerned itself almost exclusively with the events recounted in the
|
||
Old and New Testaments and the Apocryphal Gospels. ‘But during the
|
||
fourth century artists began to represent the acts of the martyrs, at
|
||
the bidding of Saint Basil, who called to his aid illustrious painters
|
||
of athletic combats, to paint with resplendent colours the martyr
|
||
Barlaam, the crowned athlete, whom he found himself unable adequately
|
||
to describe.... A fresco came to light in 1887, under the Church of SS.
|
||
Giovanni e Paolo on the Celian Hill, which shows three Christians being
|
||
put to death beneath the rule of Julian the Apostate, kneeling with
|
||
eyes bound and hands tied behind their backs. This may be considered as
|
||
the first representation of a martyrdom....’[152]
|
||
|
||
Sixtus III (432–440), as is shown by the inscription which is read
|
||
above the principal door of Santa Maria Maggiore, had had the
|
||
instruments of their martyrdom painted only beneath the feet of the
|
||
martyrs.
|
||
|
||
‘Ecce tui testes uteri sibi proemia portant
|
||
Sub pedibusque jacet passio cuique sua.
|
||
Ferrum, flamma, ferae, fluvius, sævumque venenum
|
||
Tot tamen has mortes una corona manet.’[153]
|
||
|
||
Thus in the fourth century there were representations of martyrdoms,
|
||
and in the fifth century single figures of the martyrs more or less
|
||
idealized, but they apparently carried the crown of victory, ‘the
|
||
crown of their high calling,’ not the palm. But though the crown was
|
||
generally used, the palm of the primitive Christian Church was not
|
||
forgotten, for, as Cassiodorus, writing at the beginning of the sixth
|
||
century, points out, it was palms which, in the eyes of the people,
|
||
indicated those strong athletes who were victorious, and advocates
|
||
their use as a religious symbol.
|
||
|
||
Palms at this period seem to have been used as an emblem of the public
|
||
games themselves. On the consular diptyches, the double tablets of
|
||
ivory which a consul had carved to commemorate his entry into office,
|
||
it was customary to put palms beneath the figure of the consul, among
|
||
the bags of money and other objects that were supposed to represent the
|
||
benefits which would accrue to the populace beneath his rule.
|
||
|
||
It was probably this secular use of the palm which excluded it from
|
||
the symbolism of the Church during the early centuries, for it is palm
|
||
trees not palm branches which are found in the early mosaics, notably
|
||
those of S. Apollinare Nuova in Ravenna, where palm trees alternate
|
||
with the figures round the frieze, and palm trees, according to St
|
||
Ambrose, were not the symbol of victory but the emblem of the righteous
|
||
man, ‘for its roots are upon the earth but its head is lifted towards
|
||
the heavens.’
|
||
|
||
But by the thirteenth century the public games had dropped from Italian
|
||
social life, and religious art reverted once more to the palm branch
|
||
of the catacombs as the symbol of a martyr’s triumph over death.
|
||
Durandus, writing about the year 1286, unites the different renderings
|
||
of the palm’s significance. He says: ‘Martyrs are painted with the
|
||
instruments of their torture and sometimes with palms, which signify
|
||
victory, according to that saying:
|
||
|
||
‘“The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree; as a palm tree
|
||
flourishes, so his memory shall be preserved.”’[154]
|
||
|
||
After the Renaissance martyrs were very generally depicted with palms,
|
||
either in place of, or in addition to, the instruments of their
|
||
martyrdom. They varied in size and shape, from the tiny closed palm
|
||
no longer than a human hand, used by Cimabue,[155] to the magnificent
|
||
pedestal of palm branches on which Carpaccio has set his ‘Saint Ursula
|
||
in Glory.’[156] Saint Christopher, the giant saint, in consideration
|
||
of his size, was always allowed a whole palm tree as his staff, but a
|
||
whole palm tree, or the tiniest scrap of its foliage, carried exactly
|
||
the same meaning.
|
||
|
||
The palm is also given occasionally to several saints who have not
|
||
suffered a violent death, but have been conspicuous for their victory
|
||
over pain and temptation; for instance, Saint Francis, Saint Catharine
|
||
of Siena and Saint Clare.
|
||
|
||
Even in the Catacombs two palms are sometimes placed crossways, not on
|
||
the tombs of martyrs only, but on other Christian tombs, to signify the
|
||
victory of the cross. For life as a declared Christian in the early
|
||
days of the faith was sufficiently difficult and perilous, even if it
|
||
did not end in death at the hands of the executioner. In the same way
|
||
the pilgrim who had overcome difficulties and encountered possible
|
||
death on a journey of piety to the holy sepulchre was permitted to
|
||
take the name of palmer when he ‘brings home his staff enwreathed with
|
||
palm.’[157]
|
||
|
||
Meanwhile palms never fell into disuse as a secular symbol. When they
|
||
appear on the seals and coins of emperors and kings they indicate
|
||
entirely worldly power and authority, and it is not in recognition
|
||
of sainthood that the winged genius presents Henri IV with palm and
|
||
wreath of laurel in the fine allegorical picture of his ‘Entry into
|
||
Paris after the Battle of Ivry.’[158]
|
||
|
||
In a hymn of Saint Augustine, Jesus Christ is designated the ‘Palma
|
||
bellatorum,’ but, perhaps by reason of its pagan origin, and also
|
||
because it has never been exclusively a religious symbol, Christ as
|
||
the conqueror of sin and death is seldom depicted with the palm of
|
||
victory. In a few devotional Crucifixions palms are placed crossways
|
||
above the Saviour’s head, and very rarely it is seen in the hand of the
|
||
newly-risen Christ. He almost invariably carries instead the banner
|
||
of the Resurrection with a scarlet cross upon a white ground. In one
|
||
of the rare representations[159] where He holds a palm He holds also
|
||
the banner in His other hand, and it is striking how the adding of the
|
||
lesser symbol to the greater, an error the early masters carefully
|
||
avoided, detracts from the dignity of the figure.
|
||
|
||
In the four canonical gospels, palms as a symbol are only mentioned
|
||
once, the occasion being the entry of Jesus Christ ‘riding lowly upon
|
||
an ass’ into Jerusalem before the feast of the Passover.
|
||
|
||
‘They ... took branches of palm trees and went forth to meet Him, and
|
||
cried Hosanna!’
|
||
|
||
It was a respect paid to a reigning sovereign and would support the
|
||
accusation of the Jews that He sought to make Himself a king.
|
||
|
||
The entry into Jerusalem is not an incident in the life of Christ which
|
||
is used for devotional contemplation, though it occurred usually in
|
||
the series of scenes from the life of Christ which were frequent in
|
||
pre-Renaissance art, executed in carved wood, ivory and marble; and in
|
||
the hands of the villagers of the Mount of Olives the palms signified,
|
||
of course, simply triumph, for they had not yet gained the full
|
||
Christian meaning of victory through the Cross.
|
||
|
||
In representations of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, the palms
|
||
are merely a historical detail, but it is a true symbol, in defiance
|
||
of the probable fact, when the Saviour Himself is represented carrying
|
||
the palm, as in the _Biblia Pauperum_ of 1440.[160] It is then purely a
|
||
symbol of His triumph over sin and death.
|
||
|
||
In this same edition of the _Biblia Pauperum_ the palm is also,
|
||
strangely enough, placed in the hand of Christ in the Ecce Homo; the
|
||
‘reed in His right hand’ set there in mockery, changed to the victor’s
|
||
palm.
|
||
|
||
Occasionally the palm is given to the angel Gabriel when he comes
|
||
from Heaven to announce the Saviour’s approaching birth. ‘Ave’ is his
|
||
salutation to the Virgin, and in Roman fashion, as in salutation to a
|
||
queen, he kneels with a lifted palm.
|
||
|
||
Spinello Aretino paints Gabriel with the palm. In his Annunciation at
|
||
Arezzo[161] the angel is first seen above, flying with the palm from
|
||
before God’s throne. Below he kneels, the palm in his hand, before the
|
||
Virgin. Ambrogio Lorenzetti[162] and others follow the same tradition,
|
||
but the palm was soon superseded in Siena by the olive and elsewhere by
|
||
the lily, which was adopted by painters of all nations as the flower of
|
||
the Annunciation.
|
||
|
||
The _Legenda Aurea_ of Jacobus de Voragine gives an account of the
|
||
death and burial of the Virgin. The legend is said to be an invention
|
||
of the Gnostics, and there is reason to believe of Lencius in the
|
||
second century.[163]
|
||
|
||
Shortly before the Virgin’s death the angel Gabriel again appeared to
|
||
her, and ‘he gave her a branch of palm from Paradise which he commanded
|
||
should be borne before her bier.’
|
||
|
||
This branch of palm was clearly the symbol of victory over sin,
|
||
since she had passed a full lifetime in perfect sinlessness and her
|
||
surpassing sorrows had entitled her to the reward of martyrdom.
|
||
|
||
The Legend continues:
|
||
|
||
‘And the palm shone which he had left behind with great clearness;
|
||
it was green like a natural branch and its leaves shimmered like the
|
||
morning star.’ The palm, therefore, is distinguished from the palms
|
||
of the martyrs by being encircled with stars. A Sienese artist paints
|
||
seven,[164] the sacred number, corresponding with the Virgin’s sorrows;
|
||
other artists give twelve, foreshadowing that there should be upon her
|
||
head ‘a crown of twelve stars.’
|
||
|
||
Usually, in Italian pictures of the death or ‘Dormition’ of the Virgin,
|
||
an angel, or Saint John the Evangelist, appears at her bedside
|
||
carrying the palm. Northern art was almost entirely uninfluenced by the
|
||
details given by Jacobus de Voragine of the Virgin’s death and burial,
|
||
and though in Germany ‘The Death of the Virgin’ is a very favourite
|
||
subject, the palm is never introduced. Saint John frequently, however,
|
||
holds a lighted taper, and some form of the starry palm tradition may
|
||
have drifted northwards, for the master of the Sterzing Altar[165]
|
||
paints a cluster of star-shaped flowers in the hand of Saint John, who
|
||
bends over the inanimate form of the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
Her body was carried by divine command to the valley of Jehoshaphat,
|
||
‘and John bare the palm branch in front of it.’
|
||
|
||
This scene, too, belongs to Italian art, and usually makes a beautiful
|
||
processional group. Saint John, with the privilege of a son, walks
|
||
before the bier. Duccio di Buoninsegna[166] paints him with the closed
|
||
narrow palm of a martyr. In the charming little long-shaped picture by
|
||
Fra Angelico[167] the palm has its fan-shaped leaves spread wide and
|
||
it shines as if it were of gold.
|
||
|
||
In the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of the Spanish school one of the
|
||
attendant _putti_ usually carries a palm. This may be the palm of
|
||
victory over sin and death, or, following another authority, it may be
|
||
a symbol of the Immaculate Conception, since it bears fruit at the same
|
||
moment at which it flowers.[168]
|
||
|
||
According to Dr Anselm Salzer, O.S.B., ‘The palm, when referring to
|
||
Mary, is a figure of her victory over the world and its temptations, of
|
||
her everlasting virtue, of her sovereignty in heaven, of the protection
|
||
that she offers to mankind, of her triumphant motherhood and of the
|
||
beauty of her soul.’[169]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XII
|
||
|
||
THE ACANTHUS
|
||
|
||
|
||
One plant, the acanthus, which was very much used by pre-Renaissance
|
||
artists, seems to have dropped later from the flora of symbolism.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Photo Alinari_
|
||
|
||
THE ACANTHUS OF PARADISE
|
||
|
||
Mosaic of 13th century
|
||
|
||
(S. Clemente, Rome)]
|
||
|
||
Paradise was embowered, according to Saint Paulino da Nola, in
|
||
_floriferi caeleste nemus paradisi_, and curving branches of acanthus
|
||
indicate Heaven in the mosaics of the Baptistery of Ravenna and in
|
||
the apse of St John Lateran. The Trees of Jesse and the Trees of Life
|
||
in early art are also founded on the acanthus with various symbolical
|
||
details niched in the branches. It surrounds the ‘Coronation’ and fills
|
||
the space above the heads of the saints in the large central mosaic
|
||
of S. Maria Maggiore[170] and of the fine mosaic in S. Clemente.[171]
|
||
Venturi writes of the latter:
|
||
|
||
‘From the plant, whence rises the Cross, spring two green boughs which
|
||
wreath over all the abside, enclosing with their spirals birds,
|
||
flowers and saints to give the idea of the garden of felicity. In such
|
||
a way, in the _Dugento_, at the distance of so many centuries, the
|
||
verses of St Paulino da Nola are illustrated once more.’
|
||
|
||
But after the thirteenth century acanthus plants of vast proportions
|
||
were no longer used to symbolize the gardens of Heaven. Heaven became a
|
||
natural park-like place with fruit trees and flower-grown grass, except
|
||
for its inhabitants, differing little from any princely garden. The
|
||
plant was still used as the motive of much decoration, ecclesiastical
|
||
and secular, but it was no longer seen in connection with devotional
|
||
subjects as the representative plant of Heaven.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XIII
|
||
|
||
THE FLEUR-DE-LYS
|
||
|
||
|
||
Among the symbolical flowers of art, the golden fleurs-de-lys of France
|
||
hold a high position. They were the arms of the King of France, ‘the
|
||
eldest son of the Church’; they were borne by Saint Louis, the royal
|
||
saint, and are typical of Christian royalty. Till the reign of Henry
|
||
VIII they appeared upon the royal banner of England. Their origin,
|
||
however, in spite of latter-day legends, was non-Christian, nor are
|
||
they distinctively lilies. The learned M. de Beaumont, who has made a
|
||
special study of the origins of the fleur-de-lys, or fleur-de-lis, as
|
||
he prefers to spell it, has thus summed up his researches:
|
||
|
||
1. Armorial bearings did not commence in France till after the first
|
||
Crusade.
|
||
|
||
2. It was in imitation of the Arabs and Persians that chivalry,
|
||
tourneys and coats of arms were adopted in Europe and France.
|
||
|
||
3. This flower, which we name the fleur-de-lis, is the symbol of
|
||
fecundity and royalty in ancient Egypt; it is also the sacred plant
|
||
and tree of life, adopted with the same symbolical significance by the
|
||
Assyrians and Persians, from whom it passed to Byzantium, to arrive at
|
||
last in the Teutonic countries bordering on the East. It came at the
|
||
same time to the Venetians, and the Lombards, the Spaniards and the
|
||
French, and this significant form ornamented sceptres and crowns, the
|
||
attributes of royalty.
|
||
|
||
4. When the laws of heraldry were at last established in France, after
|
||
the Crusades, this symbol became the arms of the Kings of France, who
|
||
entitled themselves _rois par excellence_. Later, the origin being
|
||
forgotten and lost, the Celtic root of the word _li_ was ignored by
|
||
the heralds. They regarded this symbolical ornament as the _lilium_
|
||
or garden lily, in itself a symbol of the Virgin, which for the most
|
||
Christian Kings of France must have been a powerful motive for its
|
||
adoption. Perhaps even a religious scruple may have been the cause
|
||
of this transformation of the heathen into the Christian symbol. It
|
||
was not till then that the heraldic writers, the greater part of whom
|
||
belonged to the Church, forced themselves to recognize in the heraldic
|
||
fleur-de-lys the form of the lilium, even though, in place of being
|
||
_or_ upon _azur_ and having three petals, it ought in that case to have
|
||
five petals and appear in _argent_.[172]
|
||
|
||
The monkish heralds found a very elaborate symbolism in the royal
|
||
shield of France. The lilies were of gold, not silver, because in
|
||
heraldry gold signifies the four kingly virtues, nobility, goodwill,
|
||
charity and magnanimity.
|
||
|
||
They are three in number because this number is complete as is the Holy
|
||
Trinity.... Also, the centre one signifies the Christian faith, that on
|
||
the right the clergy, that on the left the army. There was no end to
|
||
the hidden meanings.
|
||
|
||
‘_Enfin_,’ concludes Carlo Degrassalio of Carcassonne, ‘_ces trois
|
||
fleurs-de-lis d’or sont sur un écu d’azur, parceque, de même que Dieu,
|
||
le roi des rois, la puissance des puissances, a en quelque sorte pour
|
||
écu le bleu firmament, resplendissant d’astres d’or; de même le roi
|
||
de France, fils aîné de l’Eglise, porte pour la plus grande gloire du
|
||
Christ, l’écu le plus noble, écu sur lequel les lis d’or brillent comme
|
||
les astres sur un ciel serein._’[173]
|
||
|
||
Tradition says that the first appearance of the fleur-de-lys upon this
|
||
earth was at the baptism of King Clovis. King Clovis was married to
|
||
Clotilda, a Christian Princess of Burgundy, and her prayers having
|
||
obtained the victory for France at a critical moment, he in gratitude
|
||
became a Christian also. On the occasion of his baptism by Saint Rémi
|
||
an angel presented him with three heavenly lilies.
|
||
|
||
In the Bedford Missal,[174] presented to Henry VI when he was crowned
|
||
King of France, the legend is illustrated in miniature. The angel is
|
||
shown receiving the three lilies in Heaven. He descends to earth and
|
||
carries them to Saint Rémi, who reverently receives them in a napkin
|
||
and gives them to Queen Clotilda. Lower down in the picture Clotilda
|
||
presents the emblazoned shield bearing the three fleurs-de-lys to
|
||
her husband. This legend might seem disproved by the decoration of
|
||
fleurs-de-lys, which was already upon the great brazen bowl now in the
|
||
Louvre, known as the Font of King Clovis, had not recent archæological
|
||
investigation discovered the origin of the bowl to be neither Frankish
|
||
nor Christian, and the fleurs-de-lys prove merely that the vessel was
|
||
designed for royal use.
|
||
|
||
The confusion of the fleur-de-lys with the lily of Heaven and the
|
||
flower of the Virgin gave it a semi-religious value, which excused
|
||
its intrusion into the decoration of churches and church furniture.
|
||
Sometimes it was used entirely heraldically, as the indication of
|
||
the giver of a gift. It is used heraldically upon the silver shrine
|
||
of Saint Simeon at Zara, the gift of Louis the Great and his wife,
|
||
Elizabeth, where the fleur-de-lys of the coat of arms is repeated
|
||
throughout the entire decoration. Heraldically, yet with some sense
|
||
of the right placing of the flower which emblemizes purity, were the
|
||
fleurs-de-lys embroidered with the word _amor_ upon the tiny shoes
|
||
of the _Virgin de los Reyes_. The figure, which is still in Seville
|
||
Cathedral, was a gift from Saint Louis of France to his brother saint,
|
||
Ferdinand of Spain.
|
||
|
||
The flower is again heraldic upon the magnificent tomb of Robert the
|
||
Wise,[175] the patron of Giotto and Simone Martini, where it decorates
|
||
the background with fine effect, though it is perhaps too insistently
|
||
repeated on crowns, sceptres, brooches and the floriation of crosses;
|
||
but the constantly-recurring fleurs-de-lys in the architecture of
|
||
the Cistercian Brotherhood appear quite definitely as the flower of
|
||
the Virgin. She was the patron of the order, and their famous saint,
|
||
Bernard of Clairvaux--‘her own faithful Bernard’--devoted his life
|
||
to praising the ‘lily of the valley.’ Her impress is upon the stone
|
||
of the Cistercian abbeys of England and of France, where repeatedly
|
||
we find the ‘carved work of open lilies.’ But the Cistercians had no
|
||
monopoly of the symbol. Almost naturally the stone work of French
|
||
Gothic architecture seems to bud and break into the formal flower.
|
||
In the great Church of Albi each upspringing slender shaft ends in a
|
||
_fleur_, alternating with shields along the screen. In the rood-loft of
|
||
St Florentin, in the town of that name, fleurs-de-lys form the centre
|
||
of elaborate tracery, and in the rood-loft of the Madeleine at Troyes a
|
||
very beautiful crowned fleur-de-lys fills the panels of the surmounting
|
||
balustrade.
|
||
|
||
In the panel[176] designed for the tomb of Edward VI by Torregiano, and
|
||
now forming part of the altar above Henry VII’s tomb, the rose and the
|
||
lily meet in a charming Renaissance decoration, and the link between
|
||
the heraldic and the symbolical seems to be supplied, for the personal
|
||
badges of the king, the Tudor rose and the fleur-de-lys, are woven
|
||
together in flowing lines, till, losing heraldic stiffness and personal
|
||
application, they become the Rose of Love and the Lily of Purity, a fit
|
||
decoration for the altar of God.
|
||
|
||
But it was not in France and England only that the fleur-de-lys
|
||
was used as a symbol of royalty. In a Greek miniature of the tenth
|
||
century[177] fleurs-de-lys are scattered over the mantle of King David,
|
||
and Didron mentions that he saw a fleur-de-lys ornamentation of the
|
||
thirteenth century in the Church of Hecatompyli. The miniature was, of
|
||
course, painted before the lilies had appeared on the royal banner of
|
||
France, and the decoration at Hecatompyli would be drawn from Eastern
|
||
sources.
|
||
|
||
The most noble use of the fleur-de-lys is to express the majesty
|
||
of God. Floriated crowns as a symbol of Divine majesty were common
|
||
in French, Flemish and German art, but are seldom seen in Italy.
|
||
Most usually it is God the Father only who is so distinguished. In
|
||
a French miniature of the end of the fourteenth century,[178] where
|
||
the three persons are represented under human form, God the Father
|
||
wears the floriated crown, the other persons the cruciform halo. In a
|
||
stained glass window, with the figure of God the Father holding the
|
||
Crucifix,[179] He wears a tiara of five tiers, each decorated with the
|
||
fleur-de-lys.
|
||
|
||
Memling and his school, painting for the Court of Burgundy, held to
|
||
the French traditions, and God the Father in the ‘Coronation’ on the
|
||
shrine of St Ursula, God the Son in the ‘Christ surrounded by Angels’
|
||
in Antwerp, and the Virgin on the wings (outer) of the ‘Last Judgment’
|
||
at Danzig, all wear crowns ornamented with fleurs-de-lys.
|
||
|
||
In German art there are fewer crowns bearing the fleur-de-lys, the
|
||
crowns of both the Deity and the Virgin having usually the arched
|
||
imperial form. But very frequently towards the end of the fifteenth
|
||
century the rays of light, which in Italian art make a cruciform
|
||
bar across the halo of the Saviour, in Germany take the form of
|
||
fleurs-de-lys. They are particularly noticeable in ‘The Virgin and
|
||
Saint Anne with the Child’ of Hans Fries,[180] and in a rather more
|
||
elaborate form in the work of Wolgemut.[181]
|
||
|
||
There are two saints who have always had the right to wear the royal
|
||
lilies of France.
|
||
|
||
They are Saint Louis of France, in his lifetime Louis IX, and his
|
||
grand-nephew Louis, Bishop of Toulouse.
|
||
|
||
King Louis, the saintly soldier who brought to France the Crown of
|
||
Thorns and, to enshrine it, built the Sainte Chapelle, died in Crusade
|
||
before the walls of Tunis in 1270. Twenty-seven years later he was
|
||
canonized, and Giotto painted his portrait in Santa Croce.
|
||
|
||
Mr Gardner comments on this fresco:
|
||
|
||
‘St Louis the King (one whom Dante does not seem to have held in
|
||
honour), a splendid figure, calm and noble, in one hand the sceptre
|
||
and in the other the Franciscan cord, his royal robe besprinkled with
|
||
the golden lily of France over the armour of the warrior of the Cross,
|
||
his face absorbed in celestial contemplation. He is the Christian
|
||
realization of the Platonic philosopher king; “St Louis,” says Walter
|
||
Pater, “precisely because his whole being was full of heavenly vision,
|
||
in self-banishment from it for a while, led and ruled the French people
|
||
so magnanimously alike in peace and war.” Opposite him is St Louis of
|
||
Toulouse, with the royal crown at his feet; below are St Elizabeth of
|
||
Hungary, with her lap full of flowers, and, opposite to her, St Clare,
|
||
of whom Dante’s Piccarda tells so sweetly in the _Paradiso_--that lady
|
||
on high whom, “perfected life and lofty merit doth enheaven.”’[182]
|
||
Saint Clare carries a lily.
|
||
|
||
In the Prado there is a Holy Trinity by C. Coello, where Saint Louis
|
||
is placed opposite to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, who holds a basket
|
||
of roses, and this grouping of the two royal saints is often found. St
|
||
Elizabeth was canonized before St Louis was born, but they are well
|
||
matched in piety, both of noble birth, both dying in the flower of
|
||
their age, and both devoted to their people’s welfare. There is a very
|
||
interesting figure of Saint Louis, intellectual, earnest and strong, in
|
||
the _Mariage Mystique_[183] of Jean Perréal.
|
||
|
||
Saint Louis of Toulouse was the grandson of Charles of Anjou, who was
|
||
suzerain of Florence for ten years. Perugia chose him as her patron
|
||
saint, and in Florence he was patron of the Parte Guelfa. He is easily
|
||
recognized by his mitre and the fleurs-de-lys upon his cope. There is
|
||
a statue of him by Donatello at Santa Croce, and pictures elsewhere by
|
||
Bonfigli, Simone Martini, Moretto and Cosimo Rosselli.
|
||
|
||
Perhaps the most sympathetic and individual portrait of him is that of
|
||
Bartolommeo Vivarini.[184] He carries book and crozier and his youthful
|
||
face is very sweet and earnest, though it has the set lips of the true
|
||
churchman. The cope is bordered with a large design of fleurs-de-lys.
|
||
|
||
Both these saints wear the fleur-de-lys to mark that they are members
|
||
of the Royal House of France. The purity which the lily symbolizes when
|
||
regarded as the flower of the Virgin is a secondary significance. Now
|
||
another holy one has joined them, who also, though of lowly birth, bore
|
||
the golden lilies. But for her they were the true lilies of maidenhood,
|
||
their form merely showing that the right to carry them on her banner
|
||
was the gift of a French king.
|
||
|
||
‘With a wreath woven by no mortal hand shall she (Jeanne d’Arc) at
|
||
Reims engarland happily the gardener of the Lily, named Charles,
|
||
son of Charles,’ prophesied Engélinde, the Hungarian seer, and at
|
||
the fulfilment Charles was not ungrateful. Since a woman cannot
|
||
heraldically bear arms, he granted to the brothers of the maid the
|
||
right to wear two of the royal lilies on their shield. The blazon was
|
||
_d’azur à la couronne royale d’or soutenue d’une épée d’argent croisée
|
||
et pommetée d’or en pal, cotoyée de deux fleurs-de-lis d’or_. They
|
||
were given at the same time (December 1429) the surname of _du lis_.
|
||
|
||
The sword has the blade ornamented with five fleurs-de-lys and is
|
||
apparently the famous one unearthed in the Church of St Catharine at
|
||
Fierbois, ‘decked with five flower-de-luces on each side.’[185] But
|
||
in the least doubtful of the many contemporary portraits of the Maid
|
||
(those in the collection of M. George Spetz) the fleurs-de-lys do not
|
||
appear. When questioned at her trial as to any supernatural power held
|
||
by her sword, she declared: ‘It was a rusty sword in the earth, with
|
||
five crosses on it, and I knew it through my voices.’[186]
|
||
|
||
The clergy of the Church of St Catharine, however, after finding the
|
||
sword by Jeanne’s directions, had had a scabbard made for it of crimson
|
||
velvet, embroidered with fleurs-de-lys in gold, and legend supported by
|
||
heraldry seems to have substituted the fleurs-de-lys of the scabbard
|
||
for the five crosses of the blade.
|
||
|
||
The device upon the banner was dictated to her by her patron saints,
|
||
Margaret and Catharine. It was of white linen, fringed with silk, and
|
||
embroidered with a figure of the Saviour holding a globe in His hands,
|
||
while an angel knelt on either side in adoration. _Jhesus Maria_ was
|
||
inscribed at the foot. A repetition of this banner recopied from age to
|
||
age is said to be preserved at Tours.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XIV
|
||
|
||
THE LILY OF THE ANNUNCIATION
|
||
|
||
|
||
There is one incident in the life of the Virgin Mary which is
|
||
particularly associated with lilies. It is the Annunciation.
|
||
|
||
The Annunciation was not often depicted before the twelfth
|
||
century, though there are instances of it on some early ivories,
|
||
on a sarcophagus at Ravenna of the fifth century, in the famous
|
||
sixth-century Syrian MS. of the Laurentian Library,[187] and among the
|
||
mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore.[188] During the twelfth and thirteenth
|
||
centuries, while the veneration of the Virgin within the Catholic
|
||
Church steadily grew greater, the story of her life, as apart from
|
||
that of her Divine Son, appeared in sculpture and stained glass, but
|
||
still the Annunciation was a comparatively rare subject and simply
|
||
treated. Early in the fourteenth century, however, a whole flight of
|
||
announcing angels settled down over Italy, some drifting as far north
|
||
as Holland. We find them kneeling, standing, just alighting, often with
|
||
the wind of swift movement still in their garments and almost always on
|
||
the left hand of the picture, with the Virgin in the place of honour
|
||
on the right. The Annunciation, the announcing of the near approach
|
||
of ‘the dayspring from on high,’ which was to bring light and joy and
|
||
freedom to a world groping in the twilight of an imperfect revelation,
|
||
was an incident which particularly appealed to minds rejoicing in the
|
||
intellectual liberation of the Renaissance. It appealed, too, to the
|
||
joyous nature of the Florentines, who hated the sad and tragic aspects
|
||
of life, loving fresh and spring-like things and rather elaborate
|
||
simplicity. Pictures of the Annunciation multiplied, particularly
|
||
in Florence, which was just then evolving the school which was to
|
||
influence so powerfully the Western world’s pictorial conceptions of
|
||
the divine mysteries. And in the great majority of Annunciations we
|
||
find lilies, for in this incident of the Virgin’s life above all others
|
||
it was necessary to emphasize the purity which made the wonder of the
|
||
angel’s salutation.
|
||
|
||
The most characteristic treatment of the lily, as the lily of the
|
||
Annunciation, was to place it in a pot or vase. About the year 1291,
|
||
Cavallini, the mosaicist, was in Rome decorating the Church of S.
|
||
Maria in Trastevere, and beneath the great centre mosaic of the apse
|
||
he placed a series of scenes from the life of the Virgin. In the
|
||
Annunciation the Virgin is seated on a marble throne, which has broad,
|
||
table-like arms. On one arm there is a dish, apparently of fruit,
|
||
and on the other a vase filled with lilies. The vase may or may not
|
||
have been placed there definitely as a symbol, but as a detail--in
|
||
vulgar English phraseology--it caught on. We find it on the famous
|
||
carved candlestick of Gaeta,[189] worked by an unknown contemporary of
|
||
Niccola d’Apulia. It appears on an embroidered book-cover of English
|
||
work[190] attributed to the end of the thirteenth century, and is
|
||
cleverly squared out of the chequered background of a Netherlandish
|
||
music-book[191] of 1330.
|
||
|
||
The vase of lilies soon became a more or less elaborate detail in
|
||
numerous illuminations, carvings and paintings. The earliest of the
|
||
Flemish masters, Jan van Eyck,[192] Roger van der Weyden[193] and the
|
||
Master of Flémalle,[194] make use of it. It was particularly popular in
|
||
Florence.
|
||
|
||
The Florentines loved the Annunciation as a subject and were charmed by
|
||
the easy, graceful symbolism of the lilies. They were also, doubtless,
|
||
deeply gratified, as citizens and as churchmen, to identify the lily,
|
||
their city’s badge, as the flower of the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
In Spain, even before there was any native school of painting, the vase
|
||
of lilies passed from being a detail to be an almost essential factor
|
||
in every representation of the Annunciation, and early in the fifteenth
|
||
century we find it standing detached as the special and distinguishing
|
||
attribute of the Virgin. In the insignia of the Order of the Lily of
|
||
Aragon, founded in 1410 by Ferdinand, Duke of Pegnafiel, the chain
|
||
was composed of alternate griffins and pots of three lilies, and Ford
|
||
mentions that when the Regent Fernando recovered Antequera from the
|
||
Moors he gave the city for arms the badge of his military order, which
|
||
was _La Terraza_, ‘the vase,’ the pot of lilies of the Virgin.[195]
|
||
|
||
The symbol of the vase had come to the Netherlands and Germany while
|
||
they were still pictorially inarticulate; but when they at length found
|
||
means of expression, the Germans slowly, the Flemings in a splendid
|
||
burst with the van Eycks, it was their earliest and their favourite
|
||
symbol. Memling places it also beside his enthroned Madonnas, and
|
||
it is never omitted from an Annunciation except on the occasions,
|
||
comparatively rare in the North, when Gabriel holds a branch of lilies
|
||
in his hand instead of the herald’s wand. Then there is no vase, for
|
||
there is no necessity to repeat the symbol.
|
||
|
||
But in Italy itself the vase of lilies, though popular, was never
|
||
considered essential. No vase decorates the loggias where sit the
|
||
Virgins of Giotto,[196] Botticelli,[197] Melozzo da Forlì,[198] or
|
||
Leonardo da Vinci,[199] though Giotto introduces it with identical
|
||
symbolism in the Visitation. Indeed many of the most typical painters
|
||
of both the early and the high Renaissance, Taddeo di Bartolo,[200]
|
||
Spinello Aretino,[201] Fra Angelico,[202] Lorenzo di Credi[203] and
|
||
Raphael,[204] banish lilies entirely, both from the vase and from
|
||
the angel’s hand. Ghirlandaio places a vase beside the Virgin’s
|
||
reading-desk, but alters its significance by filling it with roses,
|
||
daisies and jasmine, the flowers of love, innocence and divine
|
||
hope.[205]
|
||
|
||
On the other hand, some of the Florentine artists who had a special
|
||
fondness for the flower, notably Fra Filippo Lippi,[206] and the
|
||
Della Robbias,[207] use both, so doubling the symbolism; but it was
|
||
more correct, where there was a vase of lilies, to show the angel
|
||
with folded hands or with a branch of olive, or, as in the beautiful
|
||
Annunciation of Jan van Eyck at St Petersburg, holding the herald’s
|
||
wand. In Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation at Berlin, where Gabriel carries a
|
||
magnificent bunch of lilies, there is no vase.
|
||
|
||
According to Northern tradition the true Annunciation lily should have
|
||
no stamens, but this was a refinement of symbolism largely ignored by
|
||
artists, who were discouraged probably by the insipid appearance of
|
||
the flower when deprived of its gold-dusted centre. In Italy it was
|
||
entirely neglected, but some painters of the sixteenth century have
|
||
placed a tiny flame in the centre of each lily-cup; a burning flame,
|
||
according to Vasari,[208] signifying eternal love.
|
||
|
||
There seems to have been sometimes a doubt in the minds of the Northern
|
||
artists as to which was really the Madonna’s flower, the _lilium
|
||
candidum_ or the iris, which so closely resembled in form the golden
|
||
lilies on the royal shields of France and England.
|
||
|
||
Memling, who had painted the fleur-de-lys heraldically for the
|
||
Duke of Burgundy,[209] seemed unable to decide, and in the vase of
|
||
the Annunciation,[210] as well as in the vase which stands beside
|
||
the enthroned Madonna,[211] he has placed an iris among the white
|
||
lilies. Or possibly, with a deeper symbolism, taking the iris as the
|
||
fleur-de-lys, the ancient symbol of royalty, which, with its three
|
||
united petals, recalls also the nature of the Holy Trinity, he
|
||
has striven to interpret florally the message of the angel, that God
|
||
incarnate would spring from a lily-like virginity. It may not be
|
||
without design that the iris in the Annunciation is overshadowed by
|
||
the lilies, while in the picture where the Holy Child sits upon His
|
||
Mother’s lap, the iris in the vase (in this case marked with the sacred
|
||
monogram) has sprung upwards beyond the white lilies.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Pinturicchio_ _Photo Alinari_
|
||
|
||
THE ROSE OF DIVINE LOVE RISING FROM A PRECIOUS VESSEL
|
||
|
||
(Borgia Apartment, Vatican)]
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Pesello_ _Photo Alinari_
|
||
|
||
THE ROYAL LILY SPRINGING FROM A HUMBLE VASE
|
||
|
||
(S. Spirito, Florence)]
|
||
|
||
In the Church of S. Spirito in Florence there is an altar-piece of the
|
||
Annunciation which was at one time attributed to Botticelli and is now
|
||
usually ascribed to Pesello. The vase, placed midway between the two
|
||
figures, holds three purple irises. Perhaps the artist saw a symbol of
|
||
the Holy Trinity in the three royal lilies growing on one stalk (though
|
||
the Church held a belief in the incarnation of the Trinity in unity to
|
||
be heresy), in which case the colour, the purple of humility, would be
|
||
appropriate.
|
||
|
||
More difficult to explain is the symbolism of the vase of lilies in the
|
||
Annunciation upon the cover of a psalter, in fine English needlework
|
||
of the thirteenth century.[212] The book belonged to Anne, daughter of
|
||
Sir Simon Felbrigge, and if the date given, the end of the thirteenth
|
||
century, is correct, it is a very early instance of the Virgin’s vase
|
||
of lilies. The figures have much dignity and sweep of line, but the
|
||
lily, which is a fleur-de-lys in form, is red! Possibly in the garden
|
||
of the country convent where embroidery was worked no liliums grew. The
|
||
nun would therefore take the only lilies she knew, those of the royal
|
||
standard. For colour she would remember that they surpassed Solomon
|
||
in his glory. But, even so, the red lily argues an insensitiveness to
|
||
symbolic values scarcely to be found among the Latins.
|
||
|
||
The original symbolism of the vase of lilies was simple. It signified
|
||
the purity of the Maid of Nazareth, she of whom it was prophesied ‘A
|
||
Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son.’ She does not hold the flower in
|
||
her hand as do the virgin martyrs who preserved their purity through
|
||
storm and stress, but it grows naturally beside her and merely typifies
|
||
her girlhood. In the first half of the fifteenth century this seems
|
||
to have been the invariable intention. But in the later half of that
|
||
century the meaning was developed and amplified. Distinction was
|
||
made between the vase and the flower it contained. In France and in
|
||
Spain, where religious iconography is found in architectural detail
|
||
rather than in pictorial decoration, the favourite arrangement of the
|
||
Annunciation was to place the vase midway between the Virgin and the
|
||
angel, a composition which from its equal balance was most decorative.
|
||
The Virgin with drooping head and falling veil, Gabriel with curved
|
||
wings, both leaning forward towards the central vase of lilies, formed
|
||
an ideal filling for a lunette or the spandrels of an arch, and the
|
||
simplicity of the group made it particularly suitable for sculpture,
|
||
both in wood and stone. It is the central motive of many of the great
|
||
carved and gilded reredos in Spain and of the simpler stone altars
|
||
of France. The central vase of lilies had, however, a tendency to
|
||
become ever larger, till, from being a detail, it became the important
|
||
centre-point, and in some French Annunciations of the sixteenth century
|
||
the uninstructed heathen would merely see two figures worshipping,
|
||
apparently, a large vase of flowers.
|
||
|
||
In two Italian pictures, that of doubtful origin already mentioned
|
||
which is in S. Spirito, and the Annunciation of Pinturicchio in the
|
||
Vatican, where the large vase is placed exactly in the centre of the
|
||
composition, the flowers within the vase are not white lilies; they
|
||
are iris, the royal lily, in one case, and roses, the flower of divine
|
||
love, in the other. Therefore the flower-filled vase was no longer
|
||
strictly the symbol of the Virgin’s purity. A change, hinted at when
|
||
Memling placed the iris among the lilies, had come about, for the
|
||
flower which was the attribute of Jesus Christ was now rising from the
|
||
vase and distinction had been made between the vase and the flower
|
||
which it contained. Christ is the mystic flower springing from a lowly
|
||
vessel. He is the flower, Mary the vase. The royal purple lily or the
|
||
rose of love are, therefore, as appropriate a filling for the vase as
|
||
was the lily, and there is no incongruity in any attitude of homage
|
||
towards the vase on the part of the Virgin. But since the compound
|
||
emblem was the emblem of the Immaculate Conception, naturally it is
|
||
most often the lily of purity which fills the vase.
|
||
|
||
In the Annunciation of Albert Dürer’s ‘Smaller Passion’[213] the lily
|
||
growing in its humble earthen pot undeniably refers to the perfect
|
||
sinlessness of the soul which was yet to be born, for the flowers are
|
||
still each tightly folded in its bud, while in the culminating scene
|
||
of the series, where the Saviour sits in judgment, the lily, with each
|
||
calyx fully expanded, is shown with the sword of justice behind His
|
||
head.
|
||
|
||
Northern symbolism, always deeper and more complicated than that of
|
||
the South, required that the vase which contained the lilies should
|
||
be transparent, thus indicating the perfect purity of the body which
|
||
enshrined the soul of perfect innocence. ‘In so far that the glass
|
||
allows all surroundings to shine through without being itself harmed,
|
||
it has become the symbol of the Immaculate Conception. Therefore in
|
||
pictures of the Annunciation a blossoming lily stalk in a transparent
|
||
glass is placed at the feet of the Virgin.’[214]
|
||
|
||
The same idea is traced in the thirteenth-century Christmas carol:
|
||
|
||
‘As the sunbeam through the glass
|
||
Passeth but not staineth,
|
||
So the Virgin as she was,
|
||
Virgin still remaineth.’[215]
|
||
|
||
And somewhat akin is the mirror which occasionally appears, held by an
|
||
attendant _putto_ in a Spanish ‘Immaculate Conception.’
|
||
|
||
The transparent vase is not often seen in Italian Annunciations, for
|
||
it was usual in Italy to place the stalk of lilies, a complete symbol
|
||
in itself of virginity, in the angel’s hand, and there was no need to
|
||
double the symbolism; but the painters of the late fifteenth and early
|
||
sixteenth centuries, in pictures of Mary with the Child or in a Holy
|
||
Family, use the crystal vase frequently as an attribute of the Infant
|
||
Saviour, filling it with those flowers which express His virtues, the
|
||
violet of humility, the rose or carnation of divine love, the daisy of
|
||
innocence, or the jasmine of heavenly hope.[216]
|
||
|
||
The actual number of blooms upon the lily stalk has also its
|
||
significance. Some think they should be three in number, two fully
|
||
opened flowers and one in bud, forming what Rossetti terms the
|
||
‘Tripoint.’
|
||
|
||
‘I’ the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each
|
||
Except the second of its points, to teach
|
||
That Christ is not yet born.’
|
||
|
||
Several of the masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
|
||
painted the two flowers with the bud or three fully-opened blooms, but
|
||
more often, arguing possibly that this lily was the emblem of God the
|
||
Son when made Man, and not of the Holy Trinity, they painted simply
|
||
a natural lily plant with clustering buds and one or many blossoms,
|
||
taking the whole plant as the symbol.
|
||
|
||
Sometimes the vase holds three distinct stalks of lilies with a single
|
||
bloom on each, an arrangement which was suggested, it is said, by the
|
||
Dominican legend of the doubting Master.
|
||
|
||
A Master of the Dominicans, unable to believe in the stainlessness of
|
||
the Blessed Virgin, went to ask help of the saintly brother Egidius.
|
||
|
||
‘O Master of the Preachers,’ said Egidius, on meeting him, ‘Virgo ante
|
||
partum.’ He struck the ground with his staff and from the spot there
|
||
immediately sprang a lily. ‘O doubting Master,’ he said again, ‘Virgo
|
||
in partu.’ He struck the earth and again a lily sprang. He spoke a
|
||
third time, ‘O my brother, Virgo post partum,’ a third lily bloomed,
|
||
and the Master of the Dominicans doubted no more.
|
||
|
||
A detached vase holding three lily blooms occurs frequently as the
|
||
motive of an architectural decoration executed in low relief, one
|
||
beautiful example being above the door of the Badia Church of Florence.
|
||
But it is not confined to buildings of Dominican origin, and the
|
||
arrangement seems to owe its popularity more to its symmetry than to
|
||
any supporting legend. In pictures, where greater freedom of treatment
|
||
is desirable, the lilies are one, two, three or more--there is no rule.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XV
|
||
|
||
THE LILY OF THE ANGEL GABRIEL
|
||
|
||
|
||
In the majority of the Annunciations which were painted during the
|
||
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the archangel Gabriel carries a
|
||
lily. In the earliest representations of the subject he has simply
|
||
a herald’s wand, which in later Byzantine art usually terminated in
|
||
a fleur-de-lys, the ancient symbol of royalty, or in a more or less
|
||
elaborate cross. More rarely he carries a scroll on which are inscribed
|
||
the words of his message.
|
||
|
||
In the early Sienese school he still holds the herald’s wand,[217] or
|
||
brings to the Virgin a branch of olive,[218] the symbol of peace and
|
||
goodwill. Once at least he holds a branch of laurel,[219] the meed of
|
||
those who excel, and sometimes the palm[220] of victory over sin.
|
||
|
||
In the famous Annunciation of Simone Martini,[221] Gabriel, who carries
|
||
a branch of olive, is also olive-crowned, and this seems to be the
|
||
proper symbolism of the subject. The messenger of God, crowned with
|
||
peace, brings the olive branch of reconciliation between God and man
|
||
to the Virgin, beside whom stands a vase filled with the lilies which
|
||
symbolize her purity. The dove hovers above.
|
||
|
||
It has not been decided which artist was the first to place the
|
||
stalk of lilies in the angel Gabriel’s hand, and first had come the
|
||
lovely symbol of the vase of lilies by the Virgin’s side. But in the
|
||
Annunciation, which forms part of Simone Martini’s polyptych in the
|
||
Museum of Antwerp, we find the herald’s wand just turning to a lily.
|
||
Professor A. Venturi, in his magnificent _History of Italian Art_,
|
||
describes it. The angel ‘holds a lily with a long stem, which is all
|
||
white. Thus the stick or sceptre of ivory, which we have already
|
||
seen in Duccio’s picture, has become partly stick, partly lily-stem.
|
||
With Duccio it is still the sceptre with three points, that Gabriel,
|
||
messenger of God, holds as sign of authority. But look how the three
|
||
points change themselves to lily-buds, and open the corolla, as the
|
||
archangel extends the candid flower towards the Virgin, who was saluted
|
||
by David and the Fathers as “The lily of the valleys.” The poetry of
|
||
Christian art thus overthrows mediæval materialism and lavishes flowers
|
||
on fair likenesses of Mary.’
|
||
|
||
In this Annunciation we find the three types of lilies used in art--the
|
||
lily growing freely and naturally in a vase beside the Virgin; the
|
||
stiff lily, half conventionalized in the angel’s hand; and the
|
||
fleurs-de-lys, wholly conventional, which ornament the arms of the
|
||
Virgin’s seat.
|
||
|
||
Simone Martini died in 1344, and by 1359, the date of its completion,
|
||
every Florentine artist must have seen the wonderful tabernacle raised
|
||
by Orcagna in Or San Michele, and every artist in Italy must have heard
|
||
descriptions of the shrine.
|
||
|
||
‘Che passa di bellezza, s’io ben recolo,
|
||
Tutti gli altri che son dentro del secolo.’[222]
|
||
|
||
On a panel of the Tabernacle there is an Annunciation which was the
|
||
most beautiful representation of the subject so far given to the
|
||
world, and the kneeling angel with the sweeping wings carries in his
|
||
left hand a heavy stalk of _lilium candidum_.
|
||
|
||
It is interesting to trace the evolution of the straight smooth
|
||
stick which the angel held in the earliest representations of the
|
||
Annunciation into the natural branch of lilies carried by the typical
|
||
Announcing Angel of Christian art. First we find upon the wand the
|
||
three-pointed fleur-de-lys, which from the days of the Assyrians
|
||
had ornamented the royal sceptre. The heavenly herald bore a wand
|
||
ornamented with the royal symbol when he brought a message from the
|
||
Lord of the Universe to the Maiden of the House of David, who was to be
|
||
the Mother of His Son. Gradually the fleur-de-lys gained some likeness
|
||
to the natural lily. The sceptre was made of ivory. It was white. Two
|
||
leaves appeared wreathing the stick. Midway in the transformation are
|
||
the lilies carried by the lovely choir of seated angels in a picture
|
||
by Guariento.[223] Each angel holds in his left hand an orb and in
|
||
the right a straight lily stem with leaves growing naturally up its
|
||
whole length. At the top is a single flower, which, seen in profile,
|
||
has the shape of the fleur-de-lys. Simone Martini indicates the
|
||
blossom’s cup-like form. With Orcagna we find the fully-realized stem
|
||
of lilies. One unidentified master of the fourteenth century[224] went
|
||
even further in botanical fidelity, and paints the bulb and pendent
|
||
rootlets, though, strangely enough, he at the same time keeps to the
|
||
old convention and places a scroll in the hand of both Madonna and
|
||
angel.
|
||
|
||
Meanwhile, in 1344, Ambrogio di Lorenzetti had painted an
|
||
Annunciation[225] in which the angel, crowned with olive, holds
|
||
the palm branch with which the ancient Romans were accustomed to
|
||
salute a conqueror. The symbol of the palm was used also by Spinello
|
||
Aretino,[226] a pupil of Giotto, and was supported by Dante, who
|
||
describes the angel Gabriel as:
|
||
|
||
‘He that bore the palm
|
||
Down unto Mary, when the Son of God
|
||
Vouchsafed to clothe Him in terrestrial weeds.’
|
||
|
||
But it did not come into general use in this connection, and chiefly
|
||
for the reason that the palm became consecrated to representations
|
||
of the last scenes of the Virgin’s life. The _Legenda Aurea_,
|
||
when recounting how the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin her
|
||
approaching death, states: ‘He (Gabriel) gave her a branch of palm from
|
||
Paradise, which he commanded should be borne before her bier.’
|
||
|
||
The palm was, therefore, a necessary detail in this scene, and it was
|
||
probably to avoid confusion between these two separate appearances of
|
||
the angel to the Virgin that the palm has been reserved entirely for
|
||
the last Annunciation. The religious sentiment of the age forbade the
|
||
portrayal of any sign of decrepitude in the Virgin even at the hour of
|
||
her death, and except for the substitution of the palm for the lily
|
||
and the reversal of the usual places of the figures, the Virgin being
|
||
placed on the left and the angel on the right, it would be difficult
|
||
to distinguish the scene where the Virgin receives the news of her
|
||
approaching death, from that in which her approaching motherhood is
|
||
announced to her.
|
||
|
||
It became the general rule, then, for Gabriel, as the angel of the
|
||
Annunciation of the Saviour’s birth, to carry a lily. But the rule
|
||
was not invariable. The early Flemish artists, half painters, half
|
||
craftsmen, loved to depict the delicately-chiselled gold of jewelled
|
||
sceptres topped by an elaborate fleur-de-lys or the cross-surmounted
|
||
orb which signified the sovereignty of Christ upon earth. These
|
||
precious sceptres accorded well with the opulent and prosaic comfort
|
||
of the surroundings in which they set the sacred drama, and reflect
|
||
the spirit of the Northern mystics. The clear detailed visions of
|
||
Saint Matilda, the inspired nun of Saxony, which occurred during the
|
||
last half of the thirteenth century, and whose imagery has distinctly
|
||
influenced Northern religious art, fairly scintillate with mystical
|
||
gems. Even the roses and the lilies, symbols, she tells us, of divine
|
||
love and innocence, which she saw in her glimpses of Heaven, were
|
||
embroidered in gold and silver thread upon rich stuffs or cloth of gold.
|
||
|
||
Italian art had different traditions. It began with the utter
|
||
simplicity of Giotto and Fra Angelico, though the Byzantine love of
|
||
rich trappings still lingered in Siena. As Florentine art progressed
|
||
it did indeed become more elaborate, till its inclination to
|
||
magnificence was severely checked by Savonarola, whose influence on
|
||
art has usually been wrongly estimated. He was no blind iconoclast,
|
||
though without doubt objects of great artistic worth were burnt in his
|
||
famous holocaust of ‘vanities,’ which finished the Carnival of 1497.
|
||
On the contrary, as Senator Pasquale Villari points out, he was always
|
||
surrounded by the best artists of his century. Fra Bartolommeo, for
|
||
four years after his death, did not touch a brush, such was his grief.
|
||
The Della Robbias were devoted to him; two received the habit from
|
||
his hands. Lorenzo di Credi was his partisan; Cronaca ‘would speak
|
||
of nothing but the things of Savonarola.’ Botticelli illustrated his
|
||
works, and Michael Angelo was a most constant listener to his preaching.
|
||
|
||
He spoke plainly to the painters from his pulpit. The beauty of the
|
||
Divinity, of the Virgin and the Saints was the beauty of holiness, not
|
||
of outward adornment of fine raiment, gold and jewels, and ‘the beauty
|
||
of man or woman in so far as it approaches to the primal beauty, so is
|
||
it great and more perfect.’[227]
|
||
|
||
We read of the Virgin that by her great beauty the men who saw her were
|
||
astonished (stupefatti).
|
||
|
||
... ‘Do you believe that she went about in the manner in which you
|
||
paint her? I say to you that she went dressed as a poor woman!’[228]
|
||
|
||
But he who taught for choice beneath the damask rose in the centre
|
||
of his cloister admitted roses and lilies where he denounced rubies
|
||
and pearls. Flowers alone survived as emblems or as votive decoration
|
||
even after the puritanical current towards the ideal set in motion
|
||
by the great Dominican became merged in the over-sweeping wave of
|
||
classicism--and even those late artists who dispensed with every other
|
||
convention for the expression of the abstract, placed a lily in the
|
||
angel Gabriel’s hand.
|
||
|
||
Modern art has adopted the tradition and in the ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’
|
||
of Rossetti[229] the wingless angel carries a stalk of lilies. There
|
||
is also a white lily embroidered upon the strip of material which is
|
||
stretched upon an embroidery frame at the foot of Mary’s bed.
|
||
|
||
The angel brings the lily to the Virgin in recognition of her perfect
|
||
purity, the transcendent quality by which alone she found favour with
|
||
God. Through it tremendous honour came upon her, and by the marvellous
|
||
nature of that honour she was eternally bound to her virginity.
|
||
‘Mary Virgin, ever a Virgin.’ In a very charming picture by Filippo
|
||
Lippi,[230] Mary, with bent head, and fully understanding the grave
|
||
significance of the gift, reverently accepts the lily which the angel
|
||
Gabriel places in her hand.
|
||
|
||
In another Annunciation by Filippo Lippi,[231] a second angel, peeping
|
||
through the entry behind Gabriel, also carries a lily, but it is a
|
||
fancy which seems to have no particular significance and rather impairs
|
||
the dignity of the subject.
|
||
|
||
So constantly did painters and sculptors of the Annunciation place
|
||
a lily in the archangel Gabriel’s hand that it gradually became his
|
||
special attribute, which he wore, as a knight did his crest, to
|
||
distinguish him from other angels and archangels.
|
||
|
||
In the apocryphal Book of Tobit is the story of Tobias, who was
|
||
accompanied by the angel Raphael on the famous journey which he took
|
||
to recover his father’s money, a journey in which he not only caught
|
||
the fish whose gall was to cure his father’s blindness, but also found
|
||
a wife. It is the only subject from the Apocrypha which now decorates
|
||
Christian churches, and owes this grace to the force with which
|
||
the story, despite its fantastic details, illustrates the constant
|
||
watchfulness of Heaven over those still on their earthly pilgrimage.
|
||
In the fifteenth century it was a favourite subject for a votive
|
||
picture on behalf of one about to take a journey. The young man, rather
|
||
helpless in his youth and inexperience, protected by the strong, wise
|
||
guardian angel, was a group painted with the greatest pleasure, and
|
||
the fascination of ideal, sexless beauty, of curved, sweeping wings,
|
||
tempted to an amplification of the subject, and though the Book of
|
||
Tobit mentions one archangel only--
|
||
|
||
‘... The affable archangel
|
||
Raphael; the sociable spirit that deign’d
|
||
To travel with Tobias, and secured
|
||
His marriage with the seven-times wedded maid--’[232]
|
||
|
||
there suddenly sprang up in Florence a short-lived fashion for
|
||
depicting Tobias with three archangels.
|
||
|
||
There are two of these pictures in Florence;[233] others at
|
||
Verona,[234] Turin[235] and Munich.[236] In each Michael is armed,
|
||
Raphael grasps Tobias by the hand, and Gabriel carries a branch of
|
||
lilies.
|
||
|
||
But the four figures in a row make an awkward composition, and
|
||
stiffness is avoided at the expense of dignity. A mincing angel, too
|
||
conscious of his pretty wings and daintily-held lily, is the Gabriel of
|
||
the best known of these pictures, attributed of late years to Botticini.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Jörg Brue_
|
||
|
||
THE COLUMBINE OF THE SEVEN GIFTS
|
||
|
||
(Berlin)]
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_The Master of Flémalle_ _Photo Hanfstängl_
|
||
|
||
SAINT BARBARA WITH THE ROYAL LILY
|
||
|
||
(Prado)]
|
||
|
||
The lily is, of course, here used non-symbolically, merely to
|
||
distinguish one archangel from another, and for the same reason that
|
||
Michael is given the sword and frequently the scales for the weighing
|
||
of souls, Raphael the traveller’s staff and gourd, or, when with
|
||
Tobias, a small box. The angel Gabriel’s primary function is to be
|
||
the herald of God, as it is Michael’s to lead the hosts of Heaven,
|
||
and Raphael’s to guide the straying. Therefore Gabriel carries the
|
||
herald’s wand, now developed to a lily, Michael the sword, and Raphael
|
||
the staff.
|
||
|
||
Thus Gabriel, when in company with other archangels and angels,
|
||
carries the lily to establish his identity, but where, as in a
|
||
Coronation[237] or an Enthroned Madonna, he stands with Saint Michael
|
||
guarding the throne, he usually holds also a scroll with ‘AVE MARIA’
|
||
upon it, showing that the main function of the lily is to proclaim the
|
||
spotlessness of the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
A rather charming treatment of the Annunciation lily, which originated
|
||
in Germany, is to strew the lily heads upon the floor. They then have
|
||
the appearance of having fallen from Heaven in a shower, like those
|
||
falling roses, symbols of divine love, which were so often painted
|
||
by the artists of Italy and Spain. ‘The Master of the Sterzinger
|
||
Altar’[238] introduces seven of these lily blooms and buds, snapped
|
||
off short, and with only an inch or two of stalk, into his fine
|
||
Annunciation painted in 1458, and, satisfied with these, he uses lilies
|
||
neither in a vase nor in the angel’s hand. Other artists of his day
|
||
liked the fancy well, but wished to keep the mystic vase, so, to avoid
|
||
doubling the symbol, they turned the fallen flowers to roses, or roses
|
||
and carnations, symbols of the divine favour which had fallen upon the
|
||
maid. It was a graceful exposition of the underlying meaning of the
|
||
scene, symbolically right and delightful in pictorial effect.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XVI
|
||
|
||
THE FLOWERS OF THE DIVINITY
|
||
|
||
|
||
The only growing thing which is used to represent the Trinity in Unity
|
||
is the trefoil or shamrock. Saint Patrick is said to have plucked from
|
||
the ground a leaf of shamrock and by it illustrated to the heathen
|
||
Irish the mystery of the Triune Godhead. Architectural details, and
|
||
more especially windows, based upon the trefoil’s form, are common in
|
||
Gothic churches. In pictorial art it is rather unusual as an emblem,
|
||
but Michael Angelo, who so rarely used symbolical detail, paints the
|
||
triple-leaved plant and no other leaf or flower in the foreground of
|
||
his Holy Family.[239]
|
||
|
||
But though the trefoil is the only direct floral emblem of the Trinity,
|
||
distinct reference to it is often found in the triple grouping of
|
||
the flowers which are the attributes of the Saviour. For instance,
|
||
the three carnations of divine love in the crystal vase before the
|
||
Infant Christ in Hugo van der Goes’ ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’;[240]
|
||
the three lilies (one in bud) which the angel holds in Crivelli’s
|
||
‘Annunciation’;[241] and the three irises in the Annunciation of
|
||
Pesello.[242]
|
||
|
||
There is no plant or flower used as the emblem of God the Father. From
|
||
time to time the Hebrew metaphor of the Burning Bush has been used
|
||
pictorially to indicate His presence; but as early as the fifth century
|
||
this image was appropriated to express the purity of the Virgin Mother,
|
||
enveloped but not consumed by the divine love.
|
||
|
||
In the Catacombs and on many mediæval crucifixes the Person of God the
|
||
Father is indicated by a hand issuing from the clouds and holding a
|
||
wreath of laurel, palm or olive. But the wreath in this case is not the
|
||
attribute of the Divine Father, but the attribute of him above whose
|
||
head the wreath is held. In the Catacombs it is the martyr’s crown; on
|
||
the crucifix it is Christ’s crown of victory over sin.
|
||
|
||
As already mentioned, the lily of purity and the olive branch of peace
|
||
are occasionally used as the attributes of God the Holy Ghost. As His
|
||
direct emblem the dove only is employed, since Scripture states that
|
||
He descended in ‘the form of a dove.’ Sometimes in French manuscripts
|
||
of the fourteenth century He is represented in human form, but such
|
||
representations are seldom found elsewhere.
|
||
|
||
Poetry and art have enwreathed the entire life of Jesus Christ with
|
||
flowers.
|
||
|
||
‘The Annunciation was the festival of early spring. Christ, whose birth
|
||
was foretold by Gabriel, was a flower that blossomed from the stem
|
||
of Jesse; His Mother, to whom the imagery of the Song of Solomon was
|
||
applied, was a flower of the fields and a “lily of the valley.” And the
|
||
place where the Annunciation occurred had a name, Nazareth, which in
|
||
Hebrew, according to an old but incorrect interpretation, means flower.
|
||
Such a meeting of associations was naturally not left unutilized by
|
||
the theological authors. It was often set forth in sermons how the
|
||
promise of the birth of God as man was connected with the spring’s
|
||
promise of flowers and fruit. S. Bernard in particular worked out the
|
||
flower symbolism of the Annunciation in poetic and ingenious conceits.
|
||
The flower, he said, had been willing, at the time of flowering, to
|
||
be born of a flower in a flower--_i.e._, Jesus permitted Himself to
|
||
be announced to Mary at Nazareth in the spring: “Flos nasci voluit de
|
||
flore, in flore, et floris tempore.”’[243]
|
||
|
||
So we find a stem of lilies or a vase of flowers as the symbol of His
|
||
miraculous birth, and on the morning of His nativity rejoicing angels
|
||
carried olive branches as they sang of peace on earth and goodwill
|
||
towards men. A helpless Infant, He lay upon the ground to receive the
|
||
Adoration of His Mother and of angels, among roses of love and lilies
|
||
of purity, or in grass thick with the daisies, violets and strawberries
|
||
which told of His innocence, humility and righteousness.
|
||
|
||
As a boy, growing perhaps to a consciousness of His mission, in Spain
|
||
He is found with thorny roses, wounding Himself sometimes with the
|
||
thorns of grief and suffering springing from His divine love itself.
|
||
|
||
Early devotional art left Christ’s life with its miracles and parables
|
||
and passed to His Passion. For the entry into Jerusalem there is
|
||
the palm of victory and the olive branch of peace. In the Ecce Homo
|
||
He wears the Crown of Thorns, and the reed as a sceptre is placed in
|
||
His hand. For the Crucifixion Signorelli painted below the Cross many
|
||
pleasant flowers, among which are noticeable the violet and daisy.
|
||
But the Northern schools reserved for this scene the bitter herbs and
|
||
flowers, the willow, dandelion and thistle. These weeds, carefully
|
||
chosen and painted with marvellous minuteness, fill the foreground in
|
||
the Crucifixion by an unnamed German master in the National Gallery.
|
||
|
||
In the last scenes of all of the divine tragedy there is no symbol but
|
||
the Crown of Thorns, and to the Resurrection no flower is specially
|
||
dedicated. But in the Thomas Altar,[244] by the Master of the
|
||
Bartholomew Altar, the newly-risen Christ is shown, and round His feet,
|
||
upon the marble step, are lying blossoms of violets and daisies and
|
||
seven heads of the holy columbine.
|
||
|
||
The passion flower does not appear in art before the seventeenth
|
||
century. It was unknown in Europe before the Spanish conquest of South
|
||
America, and it is said that when the Jesuits brought home reports of
|
||
the miraculous flower bearing the insignia of the Passion, which grew
|
||
from tree to tree in the forests of the new land, their tale was first
|
||
received as a pious invention. But the plant itself at length arrived,
|
||
and early in the eighteenth century Francesco Trevisani painted a
|
||
delightful little picture[245] less noticed than it deserves to be.
|
||
The Virgin, who is very sweet and gentle, both in pose and expression,
|
||
sits sewing beside a table on which is a vase of roses and lilies. The
|
||
little Christ, who has apparently just run in from the garden, points
|
||
out to His Mother, with a most childlike gesture, the little thorny
|
||
crown upon the passion flower which He holds in His hand. The picture,
|
||
which is not unlike the work of Andrea del Sarto in miniature, is
|
||
wonderfully attractive.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XVII
|
||
|
||
THE FLOWERS OF THE VIRGIN
|
||
|
||
|
||
There were many flowers used by the early writers as similes of the
|
||
Virgin.
|
||
|
||
‘Thou art the myrtle and the blooming rose of Paradise,
|
||
Thou art the fairness of heaven, and
|
||
The feast-day of our hearts,’
|
||
|
||
wrote Saint Petrus Damiani in the eleventh century.
|
||
|
||
In Saint Bernard we read:
|
||
|
||
‘Mary is the violet of humility, the lily of chastity and the rose of
|
||
charity.’
|
||
|
||
Conrad von Würtzburg compares her to the balsam of purest perfume,
|
||
the fairest among flowers, the cedar of Lebanon, the cypress of Zion,
|
||
fennel and mint, the white lily, the early flowering almond, the
|
||
healing mandrake, the musk-flower, the evergreen myrtle, the low nard,
|
||
the thornless rose in the dew of heaven, the noble frankincense and
|
||
the hidden violet, and further addresses her as
|
||
|
||
‘A living Paradise
|
||
Of grandly coloured flowers.’[246]
|
||
|
||
But though poets, and particularly German poets, ranged widely through
|
||
the fields in their search for blossoms which by their beauty or by
|
||
their healing virtues were fit to symbolize the Virgin, the early
|
||
artists painted very few. In those mystical Enclosed Gardens which so
|
||
charmed the Germans of the fifteenth century, only a few plants appear.
|
||
The lily, which is often the lily of the valley, the rose, the violet,
|
||
and the strawberry, are the most usual. Later the iris, the royal lily,
|
||
was added, and sometimes the seven-blossomed columbine. Occasionally
|
||
in Italy the jasmine and the daisy are also found in the vase beside
|
||
her, but all other flowers of the garden and field, the tulip, anemone,
|
||
ranunculus, primrose, daffodil, dahlia, etc., were rigidly excluded.
|
||
|
||
It will be noticed that, with the exception of the rose, all the
|
||
flowers of the Virgin are white or blue, her own colours. An
|
||
exception, which is unique, is the golden sunflower springing from her
|
||
halo on a twelfth-century window in the Church of St Rémi at Reims, and
|
||
even that is not exclusively hers, since Saint John, on the other side,
|
||
bears the same flower. White and blue are the two colours which are
|
||
held most sacred in the Christian Church. White, symbol of the Supreme
|
||
Being and of the Eternal Truth, is used in the ornaments for the feast
|
||
of Our Lord and of the Virgin, for it announces loving-kindness,
|
||
virginity and charity.[247] Blue is the symbol of chastity, innocence
|
||
and candour. Only one yellow flower is used symbolically, and that only
|
||
in scenes from the Passion, by artists of the early Flemish and German
|
||
schools. It is the dandelion, and its significance is, apparently,
|
||
bitterness of grief.
|
||
|
||
The white lily, which symbolizes purity, is found chiefly in pictures
|
||
of the Annunciation, but it has been introduced in many other scenes
|
||
from the life of the Virgin. In the first exhibited painting by
|
||
Rossetti, entitled ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,’[248] the Virgin, in
|
||
grey robes, is seated at a curiously-shaped frame embroidering a white
|
||
lily upon a ground of red material. The flower she is copying grows
|
||
in a vase beside her and an angel with rose-coloured wings waters it.
|
||
St Anne stands near, and in the background Joachim trims a trellised
|
||
vine upon which the Holy Dove is perched. In the ‘_Ecce Ancilla
|
||
Domini_’[249] of Rossetti, this same strip of embroidery, now finished,
|
||
hangs beside the bed.
|
||
|
||
The older artists paint no lily in the early scenes of the Virgin’s
|
||
life; it first appears at the Annunciation, where it was used so
|
||
repeatedly that it became in itself the symbol of the miraculous
|
||
birth of Our Lord. Giotto brings it forward in the ‘Visitation.’[250]
|
||
Elizabeth, hurrying from the house to meet the Virgin, passes beneath a
|
||
portico on which blooms a large vase of lilies.
|
||
|
||
There are endless pictures representing the Virgin seated with the
|
||
Holy Child, in which a vase of lilies is placed as a votive offering
|
||
before her feet, or lilies are held by attendant angels. One of the
|
||
earliest of these pictures is the ‘Enthroned Madonna’[251] of Giotto.
|
||
Two angels offer golden vases filled with lilies and roses. The angels
|
||
have searched Paradise for its most precious flowers and have chosen
|
||
those which symbolize purity and divine love. As the symbol of divine
|
||
love the roses are very appropriately mixed with the lilies in the
|
||
vase which Ghirlandaio[252] places on the lowest step of the Madonna’s
|
||
throne. He has also added the starry wild white campion which closely
|
||
resembles jasmine, a flower never definitely accorded to the Queen of
|
||
Heaven by the symbolists of the Church, but its clear starlike form
|
||
bringing to mind both her title _Stella Maris_ and the starry crown
|
||
described by Saint John, painters frequently use it, and white flowers
|
||
of the same shape, as her attribute.
|
||
|
||
But the appearance of the jasmine in the Madonna pictures may in part
|
||
be owing to some confusion between the jasmine and the myrtle, for the
|
||
latter was quite definitely one of the Virgin’s flowers and is even
|
||
used when addressing her in metaphor.
|
||
|
||
‘O myrtle tree of Paradise
|
||
So richly hung with fruit.’[253]
|
||
|
||
Dr Anselm Saltzer, O.S.B., writes: ‘The Greeks and Romans held the
|
||
myrtle to be the symbol of beauty, youth and marriage, because of its
|
||
delightful perfume, its evergreen leaves, white blossoms and aromatic
|
||
berries. In connection with Mary, the myrtle serves as a figure of her
|
||
purity and other virtues as well as of her influence over the unruly
|
||
impulses of the human soul.’[254]
|
||
|
||
Francesco Franciabigio[255] places a vase of single white roses at the
|
||
Virgin’s feet. Double roses, pink or red, are the symbol of divine
|
||
love, the love of Christ for His Church upon earth, and the white
|
||
single roses might be the symbol of the passionless love of the ‘_Mater
|
||
Consolatrix_.’
|
||
|
||
These flowers, placed in vases before the Virgin, are usually
|
||
significant and appropriate, but they are really more votive than
|
||
symbolical. The Latins had brought to the shrine of Venus the myrtle
|
||
and roses, the apples and poppies that were sacred to her, and painters
|
||
of Central Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the
|
||
same desire to present and sacrifice to their Lady the flowers which
|
||
were by association peculiarly hers, painted roses and lilies carefully
|
||
and beautifully in the foreground of her pictures. It was their gift to
|
||
the Madonna, as the paper roses on so many modern altars and the wild
|
||
flowers on the wayside shrines are also gifts.
|
||
|
||
In Northern Italy, particularly among those who studied in the school
|
||
of Squarcione, fruit took the place of the votive flowers, and is laid
|
||
before the Madonna and the Child, or hung in garlands across the upper
|
||
part of the picture.
|
||
|
||
The painters of the Italian Renaissance, in spite of diligent classical
|
||
study, were probably quite unconscious of this survival of paganism in
|
||
their work. But the ancient traditions of the soil did crop up from
|
||
time to time, in the same way that traces of the Norse conception of
|
||
Heaven as a magnificent big-game hunt appear occasionally beneath the
|
||
symbolism of Christian mediæval art in Germany.
|
||
|
||
North of the Alps, where the pre-Christian sacrifices had usually run
|
||
with blood, there was no inherited love of floral offerings, and we
|
||
seldom find these votive vases or wreaths.
|
||
|
||
The Madonna attributed to Mabuse in the Prado has a large vase of roses
|
||
placed directly below her, but as a rule in Northern art the flowers
|
||
are introduced strictly as symbols to recall some aspect or function of
|
||
the Virgin or of her Divine Son.
|
||
|
||
In an ‘Adoration’ the surrounding angels bring their roses and their
|
||
lilies in tribute to the sinless Child. As Saint Mectilda says:
|
||
|
||
‘The lily figures His innocence and the rose His invincible
|
||
patience.’[256]
|
||
|
||
Where the Virgin is seated enthroned, surrounded by saints and angels,
|
||
even though the Holy Child is upon her knee, all symbols except that
|
||
which the Child holds in His hand refer again to her.
|
||
|
||
It is rare, however, that, when holding the Child, she carries her own
|
||
attribute herself. Usually the symbols, flowers or fruit, are held by
|
||
angels or laid beside her throne, but in the large ‘Enthroned Madonna’
|
||
of Signorelli,[257] a painter who showed some originality in his use
|
||
of symbols, Mary encircles the Child with her right arm and in her left
|
||
hand holds a handsome stalk of lilies. That the flower refers to the
|
||
wonder of her own purity in conjunction with her motherhood, and not to
|
||
the Child’s sinlessness, is proved by the words on the scroll of the
|
||
Prophet Isaiah, who stands below gazing up at her with rapture:
|
||
|
||
‘Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son.’
|
||
|
||
Vasari says of this work:[258] ‘In his old age he painted a picture for
|
||
the brotherhood of San Girolamo in Arezzo, partly at the cost of Messer
|
||
Niccolò Gamurrini, doctor of laws, and auditor of the Ruota, whose
|
||
portrait, taken from life, is in the picture; he is kneeling before the
|
||
Madonna, to whose protection he is recommended by Saint Nicholas. In
|
||
the same work are figures of Saint Donatus and Saint Stephen, with that
|
||
of Saint Jerome, undraped, beneath; there is likewise a figure of David
|
||
singing to a psaltery with two prophets who are seen, by the written
|
||
scrolls which they hold in their hands, to be engaged in a conference
|
||
on the conception of the Virgin.’
|
||
|
||
In another altar-piece by Signorelli[259] it is the Infant Christ who
|
||
carries the lily, the symbol of His own sinlessness. In this picture
|
||
all the symbolism refers to the Holy Child, not to the Virgin, which is
|
||
unusual in an ‘Enthroned Madonna.’ But the scroll upon the cross of the
|
||
Baptist, with the words ‘_Ecce Agnus Dei_,’ directs the devotion of the
|
||
worshipper to the Son.
|
||
|
||
In still another of Signorelli’s compositions[260] the archangel
|
||
Michael stands on one side of the Madonna’s throne with his scales for
|
||
the weighing of souls, and Gabriel upon the other side with a large
|
||
stalk of lilies. The latter carries the lilies, not merely as his own
|
||
attribute, to denote that he is Gabriel, but also in greeting to the
|
||
Madonna, for in his other hand he holds a scroll with the words, ‘_Ave
|
||
Maria, gratia plena_.’
|
||
|
||
There is a Madonna and Child by Fra Angelico,[261] where the Virgin,
|
||
whose features are more strongly marked than is usual with the Master,
|
||
holds in her right hand a vase in which are three roses and a stem of
|
||
lilies. Her left arm is round the Child, whose little hand grasps a
|
||
single lily cup. The composition is not pleasing, for the Mother is
|
||
embarrassed and encumbered by the great vase; also the symbolism is not
|
||
very clear, but apparently the roses and the lily in the vase are the
|
||
attributes of Mary, while the flower in His hand refers to the Holy
|
||
Child.
|
||
|
||
There are very few flowers which are placed within the hand of the
|
||
Madonna. In Italy she sometimes holds the _lilium candidum_ of the
|
||
virgin saints in her character of Queen of Virgins. In Germany
|
||
and the Tyrol the large white lily is replaced by the native
|
||
lily-of-the-valley; and in the ‘Madonna with the Siskin’[262] of Albert
|
||
Dürer she accepts some sprays of the sweet-scented white bells from the
|
||
hand of the tiny Saint John. In many pictures she holds a rose. Apart
|
||
from symbolism, a flower was a fitting thing to grace a woman’s hand,
|
||
and the rose was considered the fairest of flowers.
|
||
|
||
‘As the rose is the flower of flowers,
|
||
So is Thy House the House of Houses,’
|
||
|
||
says the ancient inscription within York Minster, and the rose was
|
||
_the_ flower _par excellence_ in every European country.
|
||
|
||
But when Mary places the rose within the hand of the Infant Saviour,
|
||
then it becomes His attribute with the full significance of divine
|
||
love, and when she places a carnation between the little fingers,
|
||
divine love is again expressed.
|
||
|
||
But, as already noticed, in pictures of Florentine origin, the rose
|
||
in the Virgin’s hand has a special meaning, for it illustrates her
|
||
title of ‘_Madonna del Fiori_,’ and the Cathedral of Florence was
|
||
dedicated to ‘Our Lady of the Flower.’ Also in pictures painted for
|
||
some charitable institution the rose or roses of the Virgin have still
|
||
another meaning, for then, following the interpretation of Raban Maur,
|
||
they are the symbol of charity. One picture with such roses is that
|
||
painted by Giambono for the _Congregazione di Carità_ at Fano. That
|
||
these roses are in no way the attribute of the Child is shown by His
|
||
attitude, for His back is turned to the hand which holds the flowers.
|
||
|
||
One of the most beautiful things in the beautiful city of Lucca is the
|
||
little chapel of Santa Maria della Rosa. It was originally dedicated to
|
||
Saint Paul and fell into disuse, but in the very earliest years of the
|
||
fourteenth century a fresco was discovered beneath the creepers which
|
||
covered the walls. The fresco was even then considered to be extremely
|
||
ancient, and represented the Virgin with the Child and holding three
|
||
roses in her hand. In 1309 the Bishop of Lucca conceded to the
|
||
_Università de’ Mercanti_ the power to erect on the spot a church
|
||
dedicated to the Virgin of the Rose and the Apostles Peter and Paul,
|
||
and the present exquisite little building was commenced.
|
||
|
||
The outside is ornamented with lovely arabesques of roses in low relief
|
||
executed in 1333, and upon one angle is a statue of the Virgin with a
|
||
rose in her hand, possibly by Giovanni Pisano. In the sacristry are the
|
||
arms of the confraternity figuring Mary surrounded by an oval nimbus
|
||
and supported by two bushes, which carry thirteen roses, and form a
|
||
crown from which rise patriarchs and prophets. The original fresco has
|
||
disappeared.
|
||
|
||
Very rarely the Virgin holds a violet. The flower is used in Christian
|
||
art almost exclusively to indicate the humility of the Son of God in
|
||
taking upon Himself our human form, and in the beautiful altar-piece
|
||
by Stephen Lochnar[263] the Saviour stretches up His tiny hand to
|
||
grasp the violet held by Mary, so making it His individual attribute.
|
||
The panel is rich in colouring, but Mary is of the simple, placid
|
||
type of the early German school. She is gravely, deeply happy in her
|
||
motherhood, and not saddened, as in Italy, by painful forebodings. The
|
||
Child reaches up His hand with a pretty gesture, accepting from her,
|
||
who had given Him His tender little body, also the violet, symbol of
|
||
His humility.
|
||
|
||
In a picture by Bruder Wilhelm[264] the Virgin holds a sweet-pea,
|
||
bearing both the flower and ripened pods. The symbolism of the pea is
|
||
obscure and is not to be traced in Christian iconography, though there
|
||
is the legend of the _erbilia_, a species of pea which, springing first
|
||
from the footsteps of Saint Columban, still grows upon the Tuscan
|
||
mountains. Possibly the symbolism may lie in the simultaneous flowering
|
||
and fruiting of the pea, for the palm was held by some writers to be an
|
||
emblem of the Virgin, and for the reason that ‘it flowered and fruited
|
||
at one and the same time.’[265]
|
||
|
||
There are three subjects, all connected with the Virgin’s death, where
|
||
lilies are once more found. They are her Ascension, the Giving of
|
||
her Girdle to Saint Thomas, and her Coronation. In each of these the
|
||
flower-filled tomb, from which she has just arisen, is introduced,
|
||
usually as the base of the composition.
|
||
|
||
But the lilies in these pictures do not refer to the immaculate purity
|
||
of the Virgin Mother, but represent the souls of ‘angels, confessors
|
||
and virgins.’ The legends which the _Legenda Aurea_ contains were
|
||
collected by Jacobus de Voragine during the last half of the thirteenth
|
||
century, while the lily was still the flower of virgin martyrs and
|
||
was not yet the Madonna’s lily. He gives the following account of the
|
||
burial of the Virgin:
|
||
|
||
‘The Lord commanded the Apostles that they should carry the body into
|
||
the valley of Jehoshaphat and place it in a new tomb that had been dug
|
||
there, and watch three days beside it, till He should return.
|
||
|
||
‘And straightway there surrounded her flowers of roses, which are the
|
||
blessèd company of martyrs; and lilies of the valley, which are the
|
||
bands of angels, confessors and virgins.’
|
||
|
||
But the _Byzantine Guide to Painting_, in the paragraph entitled ‘How
|
||
to represent the Assumption of the Divine Mother,’ directs that in the
|
||
lower part of the picture there should be ‘an open and empty tomb.’
|
||
|
||
There was therefore divergence of opinion, and the Church apparently
|
||
left the artist free.
|
||
|
||
Jacobus de Voragine seems to have collected the many floating legends
|
||
of the Virgin, and with that poetic judgment which was the peculiar
|
||
gift of his generation, to have preserved those forms particularly
|
||
marked by sweetness or distinction of incident. But some even of his
|
||
own countrymen apparently preferred the legend in its balder form, for
|
||
the astonished Apostles surround a bare and empty tomb. Beyond the
|
||
Alps, where the _Legenda Aurea_ never had much influence, the tomb is
|
||
almost invariably empty, and indeed all three subjects are rare in the
|
||
North, though the death of the Virgin is frequently represented.
|
||
|
||
The majority of Italian painters, however, gladly seized the pretty
|
||
detail, and the Virgin’s tomb is usually flower-filled. But the
|
||
painters of the high Renaissance did not keep strictly to the symbolism
|
||
of the legend. There is a beautiful fresco by Sodoma,[266] in which the
|
||
Virgin, dignified and lovely, ascends from a tomb brimming over with
|
||
roses, and from among them springs one mystic lily.
|
||
|
||
Raphael,[267] too, gives a single lily rising from among the roses,
|
||
and both he and Sodoma seem to have adopted the later fashion of
|
||
considering the lily as exclusively the Virgin Mary’s flower, and
|
||
instead of serried lilies, representing bands of angels and virgin
|
||
saints, they paint one only flower, emblem of the Queen of Virgins
|
||
rising to Heaven attended by the glowing souls of martyrs.
|
||
|
||
Botticelli,[268] on the other hand, has left the roses and painted
|
||
lilies only, lilies crowded together in such a mass of loveliness that
|
||
the mourners seem blinded even to the gorgeous bow of angels in the sky
|
||
and to the greater wonder in the opening heavens high above.
|
||
|
||
Benozzo Gozzoli[269] gives the flower-filled tomb, but neglects the
|
||
symbolism of the legend, for to the roses he adds daisies and jasmine.
|
||
It is simply a collection of the flowers sacred to the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
Giulio Romano,[270] in the _Madonna di Monteluce_, paints neither roses
|
||
nor lilies, merely small, indeterminate blossoms, mauve, blue and
|
||
yellow.
|
||
|
||
On one panel,[271] of the fifteenth century, which represents ‘The
|
||
Giving of the Girdle to Saint Thomas,’ cut roses and lilies lie upon
|
||
the top of the closed tomb, which seems a misapprehension of the
|
||
legend, but possibly the artist merely intended to paint the flowers
|
||
usually used as attributes of the Virgin--the rose of love and the lily
|
||
of purity--without any reference to the story as told in the Golden
|
||
Legend.
|
||
|
||
But though the lilies of the Virgin’s tomb represent angels and virgin
|
||
saints, in those pictures of her Coronation or Assumption, where no
|
||
tomb is shown, the flower is the symbol of her own purity. Through her
|
||
perfect purity she has attained the crown, therefore it is with stems
|
||
of white lilies that the rose-crowned angels hail her Queen.
|
||
|
||
Fra Filippo Lippi[272] paints her kneeling to receive the crown from
|
||
God the Father:
|
||
|
||
‘Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood
|
||
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet
|
||
As puff on puff of grated orris-root.’[273]
|
||
|
||
A child-angel holds a scroll with the words:
|
||
|
||
‘_Is perfecit opus_,’
|
||
|
||
and the archangel Gabriel with a lily, painted in a small lunette above
|
||
the throne, recalls the first beginning of the work now perfected;
|
||
while before the throne, and thick on either side, is a waving grove of
|
||
large white lilies, each stalk held by an adoring angel.
|
||
|
||
The devotional figure of the Virgin known as the ‘Immaculate
|
||
Conception’ is usually presented as the woman with ‘the moon under
|
||
her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars;’ four or five
|
||
attendant child-angels each carry a symbol of her virtues, and the
|
||
lily is always prominent among them.
|
||
|
||
This particular aspect of the Virgin was especially popular in Spain,
|
||
where Murillo was its finest exponent. The flowers of an Immaculate
|
||
Conception are the rose, lily, olive and palm, signifying love, purity,
|
||
peace and victory. Sometimes the iris, the royal lily, is added;
|
||
sometimes it replaces the _lilium candidum_. José Antolines[274] paints
|
||
the iris only.
|
||
|
||
In the chapter on ‘Garlands of Roses’ we remarked the thorns which in
|
||
the mystic Enclosed Gardens of Germany illustrate the verse:
|
||
|
||
‘As a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.’
|
||
|
||
With the closing of the fifteenth century these thorn trellises
|
||
passed from Northern art, but the application of the metaphor to the
|
||
Virgin still persisted in Northern theology, and since the Immaculate
|
||
Conception had replaced the _Hortus Conclusus_ as a devotional subject,
|
||
it is as an attribute of the Virgin, risen to glory, that we find the
|
||
thorns, and in an Immaculate Conception by Seghers[275] a child-angel
|
||
flutters at the Madonna’s feet with a lily enclosed in branches of
|
||
thorns.
|
||
|
||
In the 24th chapter of Ecclesiasticus there is a description of
|
||
Wisdom with her attributes in which the Roman Catholic Church has
|
||
seen a prefiguring of the Virgin Mary. Some pictorial renderings of
|
||
the Immaculate Conception make special reference to this, notably the
|
||
large altar-piece, of unknown authorship, but believed to date from the
|
||
end of the fifteenth century, which was painted for the Church of S.
|
||
Francesco in Lucca.[276]
|
||
|
||
In the upper part of the picture Christ is seen seated, and holding out
|
||
above the kneeling Virgin the sceptre of His royal favour. Above the
|
||
sceptre is a scroll with the words from the Book of Esther: ‘Not for
|
||
thee was this law made, but for all mankind.’ She alone was immaculate.
|
||
Around there is a wreath of angels. Below stand King David, King
|
||
Solomon, Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm and Saint Anthony of Padua.
|
||
Behind these figures stretches a charming garden. Against the horizon
|
||
are the cypresses of Mount Zion, the cedar of Lebanon, the palm tree
|
||
of Cades, and also a pomegranate laden with fruit. Midway there is a
|
||
rose hedge thick with the roses of Jericho. A terrace runs across the
|
||
garden, and upon the parapet are two stone vases, one labelled _Mirra_
|
||
and the other _Balsamum_.
|
||
|
||
These trees and plants are the trees and plants to which Wisdom, and
|
||
therefore Mary, is likened in Ecclesiasticus, with the pomegranate of
|
||
the Canticles.
|
||
|
||
‘Quasi cedrus exaltata sum in Libano, et quasi cypressus in Monte Sion:
|
||
quasi palma exaltata sum in Cades, et quasi plantatio rosae in Jericho:
|
||
... Sicut cinnamomum et balsamum aromatizans odorem dedi: quasi myrrha
|
||
electa dedi suavitatem odoris.[277]
|
||
|
||
‘Emissiones tuae paradisus malorum punicorum cum pomorum
|
||
fructibus.’[278]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XVIII
|
||
|
||
THE LILY OF THE SAINTS
|
||
|
||
|
||
The ancient Hebrews took the lily as the symbol of chastity. The name
|
||
of the chaste woman of the apocryphal story was Susannah, in Hebrew
|
||
Shusan, which signifies a lily. The derivation was not forgotten by
|
||
German artists, for a lily is usually conspicuous in the elaborate
|
||
garden scenes in which they set this subject, though the Italians
|
||
reserved the flower for the Madonna and the saints of the monastic
|
||
orders.
|
||
|
||
Originally the lily was given to all virgin saints, and it was
|
||
considered their special attribute before the flower was particularly
|
||
associated with the Virgin Mary.
|
||
|
||
‘Jesus, corona virginum
|
||
Qui pergis inter lilia
|
||
Septis choreis virginum
|
||
Sponsus decorus gloria.’
|
||
|
||
In the Catacombs there are no virgin martyrs depicted, and the few
|
||
lilies found there represent merely the flora of Heaven with the
|
||
general significance of celestial bliss. In the early mosaics, too,
|
||
both in Ravenna and Rome, the lilies are decorative and the virgins
|
||
carry crowns of victory.
|
||
|
||
But as early as the ninth century the lily is used pictorially as the
|
||
indication of virginity in the famous Beneditional of Saint Ethelwold
|
||
of Winchester.[279] The Saxon queen, Saint Ethelreda (Saint Audry),
|
||
who leads the choir of virgin saints, wears the Benedictine habit, is
|
||
crowned, and holds in one hand the gospel and in the other a lily. She
|
||
founded Ely Cathedral and, at least after her second marriage, lived as
|
||
a nun. The miniature was executed in 980.
|
||
|
||
In the Church of S. Chiara in Naples there is a picture executed in
|
||
mosaic of the early Christian martyr, Saint Reparata. The mosaic, which
|
||
is of the thirteenth century, is attributed to Cavallini, and the saint
|
||
has a lily by her side.
|
||
|
||
But after the thirteenth century the lily is given almost exclusively
|
||
to saints of the monastic orders, the higher distinction of the palm
|
||
being awarded to the martyrs. ‘For,’ says Durandus, ‘the Martyrdom
|
||
taketh precedence of the Virginity; because it is a sign of the more
|
||
perfect love: according as the Truth saith, “Greater love hath no man
|
||
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’”
|
||
|
||
Occasionally these early saints are given the lily in addition to the
|
||
palm. Mantegna paints Saint Euphemia with a lily in the right hand and
|
||
a palm in the left.[280] But usually they have the palm alone. The
|
||
lilies of Saint Cecilia allude to the celestial lilies of her legend.
|
||
|
||
_À propos_ of Saint Cecilia, Chaucer’s very charming, if fanciful,
|
||
derivation of her name may be recalled:
|
||
|
||
‘First wol I you the name of Sainte Cecilie
|
||
Expoune as men may in hire storie see:
|
||
It is to sayn in English, Hevens lilie,
|
||
For pure chasteness of virginitee,
|
||
Or for she whitnesse had of honestee,
|
||
And grene of conscience, and of good fame
|
||
The swote savour, lilie was her name.’
|
||
|
||
Since the lily was appropriated by the celibates of the Church another
|
||
symbol had to be found for the chastity of those still in the world,
|
||
and for the virtue of the secular the unicorn was chosen. The mediæval
|
||
legend ran that the unicorn was of all created beasts the fiercest and
|
||
most difficult to capture. But should a maid be in his path he would
|
||
lie down with his head upon her lap and then the hunter could take him
|
||
with great ease.
|
||
|
||
‘The Triumph of Chastity’ with the ‘Triumph of Love’ as a pendant
|
||
were rather favourite subjects in the fifteenth century in Italy,
|
||
particularly as a decoration of the elaborate bridal chests or
|
||
_cassoni_, then in vogue. ‘The Triumph of Chastity’ of Liberale da
|
||
Verona[281] is typical. The white-clothed figure of a young woman
|
||
stands upon a car drawn by unicorns, while behind follows a rejoicing
|
||
crowd. She holds a cornucopia but no lily appears.
|
||
|
||
On the shutters in the Hall of Heliodorus, in the Vatican, there is a
|
||
very beautiful Renaissance design in which the lily and the unicorn are
|
||
united, but usually in Italy the lily was kept as an ecclesiastical and
|
||
the unicorn as a secular symbol.
|
||
|
||
In German art both lily and unicorn are held to be symbols of the
|
||
Virgin’s purity, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there
|
||
were many tapestries and embroideries executed in the convents
|
||
illustrating that strange allegorical version of the Annunciation known
|
||
as ‘The Hunting of the Unicorn.’ But the unicorn is never associated
|
||
with the monastic saints, and indeed, in Northern art, monastic saints
|
||
themselves are rather rare.
|
||
|
||
The lily was, therefore, latterly the symbol of monastic celibacy.
|
||
There is a curious allegorical picture of Saint Francis by Sassetta.
|
||
The present owner, Mr B. Behrenson, describes it thus:
|
||
|
||
‘Over the sea and the land, into the golden heavens, towers the
|
||
figure of the blessed Francis, his face transfigured with ecstasy,
|
||
his arms held out in his favourite attitude of the cross, his feet
|
||
firmly planted on a prostrate warrior in golden panoply. Cherubim and
|
||
Seraphim, with fiery wings and deep crescent halos, form behind the
|
||
saint a nimbus framing a glory of gold and azure, as dazzling as the
|
||
sky and as radiant as the sun. Overhead, on opalescent cloudlets,
|
||
float Poverty in her patched dress, looking up with grateful devotion,
|
||
Obedience in her rose-red robe with a yoke about her neck and her hands
|
||
crossed on her breast, and Chastity in white, holding a lily.’[282]
|
||
|
||
All three maidens are attractive, and Chastity the prettiest of the
|
||
three, unlike the immured ‘Castitas’ of Giotto,[283] whose guards, with
|
||
surely unnecessary vigour, drive off ‘Amor’ with pitch-forks.
|
||
|
||
The two men not in holy orders, who are permitted to carry the lily,
|
||
are Saint John the Baptist and Saint Joseph. The former, even if he
|
||
took no formal vow of celibacy, is looked upon as the first of the
|
||
Christian anchorites, and the lily of Saint Joseph is the symbol of the
|
||
self-abnegation of his married life.
|
||
|
||
The history of the marriage of the Virgin Mary is found in the
|
||
apocryphal ‘Gospel of the Birth of Mary,’ translated by Saint Jerome
|
||
and abridged in the _Catalogus Sanctorum_ of Peter de Natalibus.
|
||
|
||
‘And when Mary was fourteen years of age the High Priest commanded
|
||
that the virgins brought up in the temple should return home and be
|
||
wedded according to law. And all obeyed except Mary, who replied that
|
||
she might not, as her parents had dedicated her to the Lord and she
|
||
herself had vowed her virginity to God. And the High Priest, being
|
||
perplexed by Mary’s vow (which ought to be kept) on the one hand, and
|
||
the introduction of a new custom in Israel on the other, summoned the
|
||
elders together to consult upon the matter. And as they prayed, a voice
|
||
came from the sanctuary commanding that every man of the house of
|
||
David, who was not wedded, should place his rod on the altar, and he
|
||
whose rod should bud, and the Holy Spirit descend upon it in the form
|
||
of a dove, according to the prophecy of Isaiah, should be the spouse of
|
||
Mary.
|
||
|
||
‘And there was among the rest a certain Joseph of the House of David,
|
||
an old man and a widower, and who had sons and grandsons. And thinking
|
||
it unseemly that an aged man should marry a tender virgin, when the
|
||
others presented their rods he withheld his own. And no miracle
|
||
appearing, the High Priest inquired of the Lord, who answered that he
|
||
only to whom the Virgin was to be espoused had not presented his rod.
|
||
So Joseph was brought forward, and presented his rod, and straightway
|
||
it budded, and the dove descended from heaven and settled upon it. And
|
||
it was clear to all men that Mary was to be his wife.’
|
||
|
||
In one of the earliest representations[284] which we have of the
|
||
‘Marriage of the Virgin’ Joseph holds a stalk of _lilium candidum_ with
|
||
a single flower at its summit, on which is poised the holy dove. Thus
|
||
Giotto, always thoughtful and original in his symbolism, modified the
|
||
legendary flowering staff to the flower which should symbolize Saint
|
||
Joseph’s wedded life with the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
But the great majority of artists have followed the legend more
|
||
closely. Taddeo Gaddi[285] gives a bunch of leaves at the staff’s
|
||
top, just such leaves as would sprout from a staff of ash. There is
|
||
only one tiny bud upon the bare stick above which the dove hovers in
|
||
the ‘Marriage’ attributed to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo,[286] and Gaudenzio
|
||
Ferrari[287] paints a scarcely-budded staff.
|
||
|
||
Sometimes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the staff of
|
||
Saint Joseph bears red or pink flowers resembling the oleander, and
|
||
to-day the country people in Tuscany call the oleander _Il Mazzo di San
|
||
Giuseppe_, that is, ‘The Staff of Saint Joseph.’
|
||
|
||
Northern art, uninfluenced by the _Legenda Aurea_, gives Saint Joseph
|
||
no flowering staff. Lucas van Leyden[288] paints him as an entirely
|
||
unidealized workman with tools upon his back but places the lily in his
|
||
hand. And he has also a lily in the ‘Holy Family’ of Geertgen tot Sint
|
||
Jans,[289] though in the many representations of ‘The Adoration of the
|
||
Magi’ in North Germany and the Netherlands he is undistinguished by any
|
||
attribute.
|
||
|
||
After the seventeenth century Saint Joseph began to have a status of
|
||
his own as patron of married virtue. Single figures of him appear
|
||
carrying a lily, not a staff, and in the ecclesiastical art of the
|
||
present day he carries sometimes the Child-Christ and sometimes a book,
|
||
but also invariably a lily. A large oleograph which hangs in the Church
|
||
of the Angels at La Verna shows the Child-Christ crowning him with a
|
||
wreath of lilies.
|
||
|
||
Occasionally the lily is given to young girls who are neither saints
|
||
nor martyrs. There is an engraving from a gold medal in the royal
|
||
library at Windsor of the Empress Leonora of Portugal. The portrait
|
||
is half-length, standing, with long hair, beneath the arched imperial
|
||
crown, and she holds in her hand a lily stem with two flowers and three
|
||
buds. It is inscribed:
|
||
|
||
‘Leonora Augusta Frederici Imp. Uxor.’
|
||
|
||
She was the daughter of King Edward of Portugal and wife of Frederick
|
||
of Austria, also great-grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. It is a pretty
|
||
figure, childish but dignified. The long hair, Mr Augustus Franks
|
||
points out,[290] is generally looked upon as the mark of a virgin
|
||
bride, and it is explained by her coronation having taken place before
|
||
the consummation of the marriage. The lily also, like the flowing hair,
|
||
proclaims her maidenhood.
|
||
|
||
But, as a rule, the _lilium candidum_ is strictly a flower of the
|
||
church. Paul Veronese[291] painted a Juno with a white lily, but the
|
||
flower has sharply turned-back petals resembling the turn-cap variety
|
||
and gracefully curving stems.
|
||
|
||
It was not till the eighteenth century that Cipriani and Bartolozzi,
|
||
both members of the English Royal Academy, could design and engrave a
|
||
heathen goddess, who, with one hand caressing a peacock, held in the
|
||
other the traditional symbol of virginal innocence.
|
||
|
||
Lilies are proper to all virgin saints.
|
||
|
||
‘Liliis Sponsus recubat, rosisque;
|
||
Tu, tuo semper bene fida Sponso
|
||
Et rosas Martyr simil et dedisti
|
||
Lilia Virgo.’
|
||
|
||
But some carry them as a special distinction.
|
||
|
||
Among them Saint Catharine of Siena comes first. She was still merely
|
||
one of the many children of a working tanner of Siena, her sanctity
|
||
unrecognized, when she was sent a dream from Heaven. In her dream she
|
||
saw Saint Dominic, who held in one hand a lily which, like the burning
|
||
bush of Moses, burned but was not consumed. With his other hand he
|
||
offered her the black and white habit of the Dominican Tertiaries.
|
||
Saint Catharine regarded the dream as a definite call and later joined
|
||
the third Order of Saint Dominic. She was a woman not only of most
|
||
saintly life but of wonderful force of character, and intervened with
|
||
altruistic motives and plain common sense in the complicated politics
|
||
of her day. She experienced the mystical trances which were the crown
|
||
of holiness to the mediæval mind, and was remarkable also for the
|
||
austerities and good works which her devoted friend and biographer,
|
||
Raimondo da Capua, likens to lilies.
|
||
|
||
‘Taught, nay rather compelled, by her supreme Teacher, she learned
|
||
every day more and more both to enjoy the embraces of the Celestial
|
||
Bridegroom in the bed of flowers, and to descend into the valley of
|
||
lilies to make herself more fruitful, nor ever to leave or lessen the
|
||
one for the sake of the other.’
|
||
|
||
The most interesting of the pictures of Saint Catharine is that by
|
||
her friend and disciple, Andrea Vanni,[292] and which is therefore a
|
||
portrait from memory, if not from life. It was probably painted at the
|
||
time of her canonization, thirteen years after her death, and shows her
|
||
as a tall, slight woman with a refined enthusiastic face. In her left
|
||
hand she holds the lilies[293] which represent the austere virtues of
|
||
a monastic life. She is the most distinguished woman who wore the veil,
|
||
and since she is almost invariably represented with a lily, the _lilium
|
||
candidum_ is sometimes called Saint Catharine’s lily.
|
||
|
||
Saint Scholastica of the Benedictines[294] and Saint Clare of the
|
||
Franciscans are also usually depicted with lilies. The last, who
|
||
styled herself the Little Flower of Saint Francis, has met with
|
||
great good fortune at the hands of the painters, for two at least,
|
||
Simone Martini[295] and Luca Signorelli,[296] have very beautifully
|
||
materialized her sweetness and humility.
|
||
|
||
Pictures which represent the mystic espousals of any nun usually have
|
||
the lily as a detail.
|
||
|
||
Chief among the monks who carry the flower is Saint Dominic. He was
|
||
a Spaniard and had all the chivalrous Spanish devotion to the person
|
||
of the Virgin. It was he who arranged the rosary and instituted it
|
||
as a religious exercise. He founded a community of preachers for the
|
||
conversion of heretics, which afterwards developed into the great
|
||
Dominican order. The great aim of his life was to guard the purity of
|
||
the Catholic faith, and to this end he hunted forth the Albigenses with
|
||
his hounds of the Lord--the _Domini canes_. He is rewarded with the
|
||
lily which, in his picture by Bellini,[297] has a singularly rigid stem.
|
||
|
||
During the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries sainted
|
||
monks were comparatively rarely painted, preference being given to
|
||
the more picturesque figures of the early martyrs who suffered under
|
||
Roman persecutions. But the earliest to appear, and the most frequently
|
||
seen, is Saint Dominic. Duccio di Buoninsegna puts him beside the
|
||
Madonna; Orcagna painted him among the happy souls in the Paradise
|
||
of Santa Maria Novella. And the reason why he, rather than the other
|
||
great founders, should appear in heavenly groups is not the fine relief
|
||
of his black habit among the gay gowns of the angels, but because
|
||
his order spent their gold on painted decorations at a time when the
|
||
Franciscans, vowed to poverty, and the Benedictines, devoted to the
|
||
making and collecting of books, had less to spend on the encouragement
|
||
of art. Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and more
|
||
particularly in Spain, saints in all habits constantly appear.
|
||
|
||
Saint Dominic almost always carries a lily. Saint Francis was
|
||
sufficiently distinguished by the stigmata, Saint Benedict by the
|
||
chalice; but Saint Dominic has a lily white as the austerity of his
|
||
faith.
|
||
|
||
Saint Anthony of Padua is to-day the most popular of all the monastic
|
||
saints. His sane and gentle piety and his reputation for granting
|
||
little ordinary boons has endeared him to simple folk. There seems
|
||
no particular reason why he, above other saintly monks, should be so
|
||
distinguished, but when he is not represented with the Infant Christ
|
||
in his arms he invariably has a lily. In the very beautiful ‘Vision of
|
||
Saint Anthony,’ by Murillo,[298] where the Holy Child appears in a ray
|
||
of light, a vase of lilies stands upon the table. In another picture,
|
||
by Annibale Caracci, the Child-Christ Himself holds the lily.
|
||
|
||
Another bearer of the lily is he
|
||
|
||
‘Whom Mary’s charms
|
||
Embellish’d, as the sun the morning star’--
|
||
|
||
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
|
||
|
||
Though opposing the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the
|
||
Virgin, he had a very special devotion to the Mother of Christ.
|
||
|
||
Many of his sermons, called by Henault _Chefs d’œuvre de sentiment et
|
||
de force_, celebrate her perfections, and, in particular, the famous
|
||
series of sermons upon the Bride of the Song of Solomon.
|
||
|
||
It is said that it was his love for the ‘lily of the valleys’ which so
|
||
impressed the lily form upon the architecture of his order, for again
|
||
and again in the Gothic stone-work of the Cistercian abbeys ‘lily work’
|
||
is found.
|
||
|
||
The lily, it may be remarked, is given to those saints in holy orders
|
||
who were pious from their earliest youth and not to those who had
|
||
passed a gay time in the world before conversion.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XIX
|
||
|
||
THE VINE
|
||
|
||
|
||
The principal of the allegorical fruits is the vine. It is one of the
|
||
most ancient emblems of Christ, and is founded upon His own words, ‘I
|
||
am the vine, ye are the branches.’
|
||
|
||
It is seen in the Catacombs, on early Christian sarcophagi, and in
|
||
the early mosaics, always as the emblem of Christ or of His Church.
|
||
A fruiting vine very beautifully expresses a perfect life rich with
|
||
the fruits of the spirit, and even were the analogy not suggested by
|
||
Christ’s own words, it is possible that Christians would have seen in
|
||
the tree whence comes the sacramental wine, emblem of the holy blood, a
|
||
likeness to Him who shed that blood.
|
||
|
||
Where the cross, the sacred monogram or the figure of Christ Himself
|
||
is introduced, the vine takes a secondary place as emblem of the
|
||
Christian Church, and taken in this sense the symbolism admits of some
|
||
complication, twelve bunches of grapes typifying the twelve Apostles,
|
||
and birds among the branches Christian souls.
|
||
|
||
One example among many of its decorative and symbolical use is on
|
||
the gravestone of Saint Cummian, an Irish bishop, who died a monk at
|
||
Bobbio about the middle of the eighth century. Two vine branches spring
|
||
from the holy chalice and form a border of oval arabesques, one oval
|
||
enclosing fruit and leaves, the next framing a star alternately. At
|
||
the top, where the two branches almost meet, are two doves standing on
|
||
either side of the holy monogram.
|
||
|
||
The vine is the Christian Church, springing from the chalice of
|
||
Christ’s blood; the fruit represents the good works of the righteous;
|
||
the stars which shine through the branches Christian hope. The doves,
|
||
by the convention of the Catacombs, signify departed Christian souls
|
||
adoring Christ, who is represented by the ancient star monogram, formed
|
||
of the two Greek letters, I = Iota, and X = Chi, enclosed in the circle
|
||
which is the symbol of eternity. The gravestone was executed by order
|
||
of King Luitprand, and, by an oversight not unique among Christian
|
||
marbles before the twelfth century, the border has been placed
|
||
reversed round the inscription--the doves, with their feet in the air,
|
||
being at the bottom.
|
||
|
||
As directly emblematical of Christ Himself the vine received the
|
||
place of honour in all Christian churches, and, even when our Lord
|
||
was represented in His own person, it was often there by right of its
|
||
secondary significance as the Church of God--‘Ye are the branches.’ A
|
||
mosaic in the Church of Saint Prisca[299] shows a half-length figure
|
||
of Christ framed in branches of vine, and the golden branches, often
|
||
intricately wreathed against a dark-blue ground, occur repeatedly in
|
||
the early mosaics.
|
||
|
||
But when it grew more usual not only to represent Christ in His own
|
||
person but also the martyrs, saints and prophets of the Church, the use
|
||
of the vine became decorative rather than devotional, and was chiefly
|
||
applied to the ornamentation of vestments, altar-cloths and the vessels
|
||
used in the celebration of the Eucharist. When, in a painting, the vine
|
||
is introduced as the emblem of Christ or His Church, it is usually in
|
||
some detail, as in the very beautiful design of the Pelican in its
|
||
Piety among grapes and vine leaves behind the figure of God the Father,
|
||
King of Heaven, in Hubert van Eyck’s magnificent altar, ‘The Adoration
|
||
of the Lamb.’[300]
|
||
|
||
Botticelli, who handled symbols with a depth of sentiment unknown
|
||
to art before, paints grapes with a different significance. For
|
||
him grapes, like the Eucharistic wine, are the symbol of the Holy
|
||
Blood, and in one of the most beautiful and unaffected of all his
|
||
pictures[301] an angel, standing beside the Infant Christ, holds grapes
|
||
and corn ears, symbols of the sacrifice of His death.
|
||
|
||
The Northern symbolists, also, took clustering grapes to have the same
|
||
value as the Eucharistic wine as an emblem of Christ’s blood. This is
|
||
clearly seen in a tapestry of the fourteenth century, formerly in the
|
||
Spitzer Collection. The Infant Christ, seated between the Virgin and
|
||
Saint Joseph, presses with His hands the juice of a bunch of purple
|
||
grapes into a chalice.
|
||
|
||
Another Flemish tapestry of the same period, which was also in the same
|
||
collection, depicts the Holy Family with Saint Anne. Mary, from whom
|
||
the Saviour received His human blood, hands to her Son the grapes which
|
||
He crushes till the wine drops down into the cup.
|
||
|
||
But the cluster of grapes which several of the Flemish artists place in
|
||
the hand of the Infant Christ seems to be not only the emblem of the
|
||
holy blood, but also, in some sort, the antithesis of the apple as the
|
||
fruit of redemption, which in the hand of the second Adam replaces the
|
||
fruit of the Fall.
|
||
|
||
In a picture by Mabuse, inscribed ‘Verus Deus et Homo: casta mater et
|
||
Virgo,’[302] the Virgin offers a bunch of grapes to the Infant Christ,
|
||
who holds a quince, foreshadowing that He should exchange the fruit of
|
||
Eden, by which all men died, for the fruit of redemption, by which they
|
||
shall be saved, and this substitution of the fruit of the vine for the
|
||
apple of Eden became in the North a rather favourite variation of the
|
||
symbolism of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XX
|
||
|
||
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
|
||
|
||
|
||
The Scriptures give no indication whatever as to the size, shape or
|
||
colour of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which
|
||
grew in the midst of Eden, and it has been variously interpreted. Adam
|
||
is depicted with an apple, a pear, a quince, a fig, according to the
|
||
individual opinion of the painter. Milton took the tree to be an apple:
|
||
|
||
‘A goodly tree....
|
||
Laden with fruit of fairest colours mixt
|
||
Ruddie and gold ...
|
||
Sharp desire I had
|
||
Of tasting those fair apples.’[303]
|
||
|
||
And the majority of artists have chosen that fruit. It grew in every
|
||
part of Europe, and, except the cherry, it was almost the only
|
||
cultivated fruit in Germany and the Netherlands. Besides grapes, figs
|
||
and pomegranates it is the only fruit mentioned in Scripture, and it is
|
||
also possible that some found reason for identifying it with the fruit
|
||
which brought sin into the world in the apparent similarity of the two
|
||
Latin words, ‘mălum’ = evil, and ‘mālum’ = an apple.
|
||
|
||
And as the fruit varies in the hand of Adam so it varies in the hand
|
||
of the Infant Christ, the second Adam. Memling and the painters of
|
||
Cologne depict Him with an apple. Il Moretto paints a pear,[304]
|
||
Giovanni Bellini a quince,[305] and Botticelli a pomegranate.[306]
|
||
The Eve of Jan van Eyck holds a lemon,[307] but he keeps to the older
|
||
convention in the symbols which he places in the hand of the Infant
|
||
Saviour: the bird, emblem of the human soul, the inscribed scroll or
|
||
the cross-surmounted orb.
|
||
|
||
The apple, when in the hand of Adam, is always the symbol of the Fall;
|
||
when in the hand of Christ, it is the symbol of the sin of the world
|
||
which He took upon Himself. ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
|
||
shall all be made alive.’
|
||
|
||
But in the early instances of a fruit in the Christ-Child’s hand it
|
||
does not appear to be definitely the death-giving apple of Eden. It is
|
||
fruit of Paradise, a delight promised to the blessed which the King of
|
||
Heaven brings down with Him to earth.
|
||
|
||
In the early school of Siena, as we have already seen, the little
|
||
Christ was still the Royal Infant, still ‘trailing clouds of glory,’
|
||
untouched by shadow of suffering, and usually bearing in His hand some
|
||
indication of His high estate. Often His hand was raised in blessing,
|
||
sometimes He held a lily of Paradise.
|
||
|
||
On an early fourteenth-century panel in the manner of the Lorenzetti,
|
||
in Siena Academy, the Child holds a fruit, but it is not clearly
|
||
defined. In one of Sano di Pietro’s most attractive works,[308]
|
||
however, which is dated 1444, the Child, seated on the Virgin’s
|
||
knee, holds a golden orange with its foliage. To His right and left
|
||
are saints, and close around there are six angels crowned with blue
|
||
corn-flowers and carrying roses and lilies. No attempt is made to
|
||
realize earthly conditions; the glowing scene is set in Heaven, and
|
||
the little Lord of Heaven holds in His hand a celestial fruit, just
|
||
one of such fruits as hang upon the trees in Giovanni di Paolo’s
|
||
‘Paradise.’[309]
|
||
|
||
In another picture by Sano di Pietro,[310] the Child (perhaps the most
|
||
charming ‘_Bambino_’ ever painted in Siena) holds in His hand a bunch
|
||
of cherries.
|
||
|
||
Cherries, painted more than once within the tiny hand by Sano di
|
||
Pietro, are always taken as the delicious fruit. Like the lilies of
|
||
the earlier Paradises they typify the delights of the blessed, and in
|
||
German art particularly they are painted often as the peculiar fruit
|
||
of Heaven. They are never taken as the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
|
||
of Good and Evil, and therefore, at least in the early Sienese school,
|
||
this fruit held by the Infant Christ would seem to be the fruit of
|
||
Paradise.
|
||
|
||
In Northern art, in the work of the French ivory cutters, and
|
||
particularly in the work of Memling and of those artists influenced
|
||
by him, the apple takes precedence of all other symbols in the
|
||
Christ-Child’s hand. Northern theologians, studying the Old Testament
|
||
carefully, and deeply interested in types and anti-types, saw in Adam
|
||
the type of Christ. The _Biblia Pauperum_, originally designed with
|
||
the intention of teaching the faith to the unlettered, served as a
|
||
pattern-book for stained glass and other ecclesiastical decoration from
|
||
the ninth century onwards. Each page is divided into three sections.
|
||
In the centre is a scene from the life of Christ; in the sections
|
||
on either side is a scene from Old Testament History, showing some
|
||
incident in the lives of those men who are considered to be types of
|
||
Christ, which foreshadowed some act of the Redeemer. And chief of these
|
||
types is Adam. Therefore in the Northern Church the idea of Jesus
|
||
Christ as the second Adam was familiar, and the fruit in His hand was
|
||
perfectly understood as a symbol. Memling, who, if he did not originate
|
||
the symbolism of the apple of Eden, made it famous by constant
|
||
repetition on his magnificently executed panels, usually treats it
|
||
quite simply. The apple is the symbol of the Fall, and therefore of
|
||
the world’s sin, which Christ accepts as His own. In the fine example
|
||
at Chatsworth, the Infant Christ, with one hand pointing to the book of
|
||
prophecy, takes with the other the apple held by an attendant angel.
|
||
But one painting by Memling[311] is especially interesting, since it
|
||
links together the two symbols, the fruit of heavenly bliss and the
|
||
fruit of Man’s redemption. The Child sits upon His mother’s knee,
|
||
and in one hand clutches cherries, the fruit of Paradise. He seems,
|
||
however, on the point of relinquishing them to take the apple from the
|
||
angel’s hand, as He relinquished heavenly joy to take upon Himself the
|
||
sin of the world.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Hugo van der Goes_ _Photo Brogi_
|
||
|
||
THE FRUIT OF DAMNATION EXCHANGED FOR THE FRUIT OF REDEMPTION]
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Memling_ _Photo Brogi_
|
||
|
||
THE FRUIT OF HEAVEN RELINQUISHED FOR THE APPLE OF EDEN]
|
||
|
||
Meanwhile the painters of Florence, Fra Angelico, Neri di Bicci,
|
||
Filippo Lippi and Botticelli, had painted the Child with the
|
||
pomegranate, and it is not very clear whether they held to the Sienese
|
||
symbolism or sympathized with the Northern tradition. But it was
|
||
probably the fruit of Eden, for in all other points the Florentines had
|
||
broken with the Byzantine conventions, and the Child was for them no
|
||
longer the Royal Child, richly clothed and dignified in gesture, but
|
||
He was a little naked human baby, born into the world to repair, as
|
||
the second Adam, the old Adam’s fault. That He is the Saviour, rather
|
||
than the King, is particularly emphasized by Botticelli, who seldom
|
||
fails, even though it be only by the foreboding in the grey eyes of the
|
||
angels, to give some hint of the coming tragedy.
|
||
|
||
On the other hand it may be possible that the painters of Florence
|
||
in the fifteenth century had harked back to another source for their
|
||
symbolism and had taken the imagery of Saint Gregory the Great, who
|
||
used the pomegranate as the emblem of the Christian Church ‘because
|
||
of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the same fruit.’ But
|
||
in later Italian art, as in all the Northern countries and in modern
|
||
Church symbolism, the fruit, most usually the apple, which is in the
|
||
hand of the Infant Christ, is the fruit of redemption, as the apple of
|
||
Adam was the fruit of damnation.
|
||
|
||
Following the same analogy, the Virgin is regarded as the second Eve,
|
||
the second universal mother, who, through her Son, is to repair the
|
||
fault of the first.
|
||
|
||
The symbolists of the thirteenth century found what they considered
|
||
proof of this in the word of Scripture.
|
||
|
||
Conrad von Würztburg writes:
|
||
|
||
‘Let a man take three letters:
|
||
When these straightforward are read,
|
||
The little word “Ave” stands out,
|
||
The new word of salutation (or healing).
|
||
Let him begin at the end,
|
||
And read to the beginning,
|
||
And “Eva” is found written.
|
||
|
||
* * * * *
|
||
|
||
That one may thereby know,
|
||
It is thou who fulfillest,
|
||
The old and the new Covenants.
|
||
The greeting from the angel’s mouth
|
||
Greeting thee, O royal spotless maid,
|
||
Hath told me this.’[312]
|
||
|
||
Therefore the apple, which masters of the Flemish and early German
|
||
schools sometimes introduced into Annunciations, laying it, for
|
||
instance, upon the window-sill, is the apple of redemption.
|
||
|
||
The apple in the hand of Eve is always the apple of damnation. There is
|
||
a curious drawing by Martin Schöngauer of the ‘Descent into Hell.’ Adam
|
||
and Eve come forth first of the released souls, Eve holding the apple,
|
||
which has the marks of her teeth still upon it.
|
||
|
||
In the hand of Mary it is again the apple of redemption, but it is the
|
||
fruit of the Fall when it is between the jaws of the serpent or dragon,
|
||
which she, at her Assumption, treads under foot.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Martin Schöngauer_
|
||
|
||
ADAM AND EVE DELIVERED FROM HELL
|
||
|
||
(Print Room, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]
|
||
|
||
In Italian art the apple is less often found in the Madonna pictures,
|
||
but the ancient analogy was not forgotten. On the predella of Lorenzo
|
||
di Credi’s ‘Annunciation’[313] there are three exquisite little scenes
|
||
from the life of Eve, and Vasari introduces the Tree of the Knowledge
|
||
of Good and Evil into his ‘Conception of the Virgin,’ painted in 1540.
|
||
Vasari describes it himself:
|
||
|
||
‘The Tree of the Original Sin was represented in the centre of the
|
||
painting, and at the roots thereof were placed nude figures of Adam and
|
||
Eve bound, as being the first transgressors of God’s commands. To the
|
||
principal branches there were also bound Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses,
|
||
Aaron, Joshua, David and the rest of the kings, law-givers, etc.,
|
||
according to their seniority, all fastened by both arms, excepting
|
||
only Samuel and Saint John the Baptist, who are bound by one arm only,
|
||
to intimate that they were sanctified before their birth. At the trunk
|
||
of the tree, and with the lower part turning around it, is the Old
|
||
Serpent, but the upper part of the form has the shape of Man, and the
|
||
hands are confined behind the back; on his head is one foot of the
|
||
glorious Virgin, which is trampling down the horns of the demon, while
|
||
the other foot is fixed on a moon. Our Lady is clothed with the sun
|
||
and crowned with twelve stars, being sustained in the air within a
|
||
splendour of numerous angels, nude, and illuminated by the rays which
|
||
proceed from the Madonna herself. These same rays, moreover, passing
|
||
amidst the foliage of the tree, give light to the figures bound to the
|
||
branches; nay, they seem to be gradually loosening their bonds, by the
|
||
power and grace which they derive from her out of whom they proceed. In
|
||
Heaven, meanwhile, that is, at the highest point of the picture, are
|
||
two children bearing a scroll, on which are the following words:
|
||
|
||
‘“_Quos Eva culpa damnavit, Mariæ gratia solvit._”’[314]
|
||
|
||
It was thus that Vasari united in one picture the two universal
|
||
mothers, the physical and the spiritual, and his allegory was typical
|
||
of the mysticism of his day, for he tells us that, being doubtful as
|
||
to the due treatment of the subject, he and his patron, Messer Bindo,
|
||
‘took counsel with such of our common friends as were men of letters,’
|
||
and Vasari’s friends included the fine flower of Italian intellect.
|
||
|
||
The picture, which is a good deal darkened by time, and less
|
||
interesting than the description leads one to expect, is still in its
|
||
original place in the Church of SS. Apostoli in Florence.
|
||
|
||
In some pictures, particularly those showing the influence of Memling,
|
||
an attendant angel holds the apple, holding it ready till the time
|
||
shall come when the Infant Saviour, with growing consciousness of His
|
||
mission, holds forth His hand to take it.
|
||
|
||
But there are various ‘Holy Families’[315] of the early German school
|
||
in which Saint Anne sits holding the apple. It seems strange that she
|
||
should, but it is to be remembered that in German popular religion and
|
||
in German art Saint Anne holds an important place. Altars were often
|
||
dedicated to her, and the holy family might, in a manner, be called her
|
||
attribute. Frequently Saint Anne and the Virgin are depicted seated
|
||
on one seat, apparently with equal possessive rights over the Holy
|
||
Child, who stands between them. There is also that strange allegorical
|
||
conception usually styled ‘_Mutter Anna selb-dritt_,’ where Saint Anne
|
||
sits with the Infant Christ on one knee and the Child-Virgin on the
|
||
other. She was the Virgin’s nearest blood-relation, and if the Virgin
|
||
was without sin, it was Anne, born in sin but the Mother of His Mother,
|
||
who most nearly connected the incarnate Godhead with the erring human
|
||
race. It was perhaps fitting, therefore, that she, representing sinful
|
||
humanity, should offer to the Saviour the fruit of the Fall, which in
|
||
His hand would become the fruit of Redemption. At other times it is
|
||
Mary who holds the fruit, but offering it to the Saviour, who raises
|
||
His hand to take it. She, as the second Eve, places in His hand the
|
||
apple by which mankind is to be redeemed, not lost, since she, by
|
||
giving Him a human body, had made that redemption possible.
|
||
|
||
In the Corsini Gallery[316] there is a picture, attributed to Hugo
|
||
van der Goes, in which Mother and Child hold each a fruit. At first
|
||
sight it seems as if it were a presentment in one picture of Christ as
|
||
the second Adam, and Mary as the second Eve, with a doubling of the
|
||
symbolism of the apple which would be illogical. But the fruit held by
|
||
Mary is distinctly a pear, that held by Christ apparently an apple. The
|
||
artist has, therefore, discriminated between the apple of damnation and
|
||
the sweeter, mellower fruit, which may be the symbol of Redemption, for
|
||
the Holy Child seems to be in the act of exchanging one for the other.
|
||
|
||
This may possibly also explain the thought in the mind of the
|
||
French ivory-cutters of the fourteenth century, for they, too, not
|
||
infrequently, placed a small round fruit resembling an apple in the
|
||
hand of the Infant Christ and a larger pear-shaped fruit in that of His
|
||
mother, though they give little indication of any action of exchange.
|
||
|
||
Northern art, though realistic, was very placid, and, except in scenes
|
||
from the Passion, quite unmarked by the sometimes painful pathos of the
|
||
Italian and Spanish schools. In the Madonna pictures the only faint
|
||
reminder of the tragedy for which the Child was born into the world
|
||
is the rosy-cheeked apple in the tiny hand. The mother is satisfied
|
||
and untroubled, the Child smiling happily, and an apple is a natural,
|
||
pleasant thing to place within a baby’s hand. Rubens painted a
|
||
delightful ‘Holy Family beneath an Apple Tree’[317]--a little scene of
|
||
idyllic happiness; and scarcely noticeable is the pathetic suggestion
|
||
of the branch of apples which Zacharias holds towards the little Christ.
|
||
|
||
The shifting of theological and artistic standpoints at the Reformation
|
||
in no way disturbed the Northern love of Old Testament analogies or the
|
||
affection for this particular symbol, and in Germany one of its most
|
||
charming developments was the Christmas tree, the evergreen tree laden
|
||
with golden and silver apples, set up in every home to commemorate the
|
||
birth of Christ. It is the Tree of Eden, which Christ by His birth and
|
||
death transmuted into a tree of Paradise.
|
||
|
||
The apple is the most usual fruit in the hand of the Infant Christ, but
|
||
some Flemish painters of the early sixteenth century give Him grapes
|
||
instead. The grapes symbolize the divine blood by which souls lost
|
||
through Adam’s fall are redeemed. Gerard David[318] puts a cluster of
|
||
white grapes in the tiny hand; Lucas van Leyden[319] white grapes also
|
||
with leaves and tendrils; and in another picture Lucas van Leyden[320]
|
||
places the apple and the grapes together upon the broad ledge in the
|
||
foreground. In this last there is the same idea of exchange which is
|
||
found more clearly expressed in the picture by Mabuse at Berlin.
|
||
|
||
This substitution of the fruit of the vine for the apple of Eden seems
|
||
only to be found in the Netherlands. In a very beautiful picture by
|
||
Botticelli, the grapes held by the angel have a simpler meaning. They,
|
||
with the corn, are the direct emblems of the body and the blood of the
|
||
Saviour, and foretell the coming sacrifice of His death; the symbolism
|
||
is identical with that of the embroidered vine-leaves and wheat-ears of
|
||
so many modern altar frontals.[321]
|
||
|
||
Very often, as upon the façade of Orvieto Cathedral, the fig-tree
|
||
is taken as the Tree of Temptation, for, it might be argued, our
|
||
first parents would take to make themselves garments the leaves of
|
||
the tree nearest to their hand, the leaves of that same tree of
|
||
whose fruit they had just eaten. ‘It is possible that the erotic
|
||
significance which the fig had among the ancients was also considered
|
||
in this connection,’[322] and it is probably because of its classical
|
||
associations that the fig was never placed in the hand of the Infant
|
||
Saviour.
|
||
|
||
Except as the forbidden fruit the fig is not found in Italian or
|
||
Flemish ecclesiastical art, but in Germany there appears to have been
|
||
no prejudice against it. It is painted frequently in the Madonna
|
||
pictures. A small fig-tree overshadows the cot of the Infant Christ
|
||
in a picture by Matthias Grünewald;[323] Hans Burgkmair[324] paints
|
||
it with the rose, the iris, the columbine and other attributes of the
|
||
Virgin; Hans Holbein[325] the Younger sets his Saint Ursula against a
|
||
fig-tree; and it is the only growing thing introduced in his best-known
|
||
work, the beautiful Madonna of the Bürgomeister Meyer.[326]
|
||
|
||
These fig-trees, unlike the barren fig-tree of Scripture, always bear
|
||
fruit and appear to be the symbols of a holy life rich with the fruits
|
||
of the Spirit.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XXI
|
||
|
||
THE GOURD
|
||
|
||
|
||
In the works of Crivelli, who painted in the cities of the Marches
|
||
between 1468 and 1493, the apple repeatedly occurs with a gourd laid
|
||
close beside it. In the ‘Annunciation’[327] they are together upon
|
||
the foreground’s edge. In ‘The Infant Christ giving the Keys to Saint
|
||
Peter’[328] the apple lies on the ground and the gourd is suspended on
|
||
the right hand of the throne. In the triptych in the Brera they hang
|
||
forward prominently from the wreath above the Madonna’s head. They
|
||
are again suspended, singly, each side of the head of Saint Giacomo
|
||
della Marca[329] (sometimes taken to be Saint Bernadine), toning with
|
||
the colour scheme, which has all the subdued richness of old Cordova
|
||
leather; and exactly the same apple and gourd lie on a ledge before
|
||
the ‘Madonna with the Child’ by Francia,[330] and have the identical
|
||
position in an ‘Enthroned Madonna’ by Lorenzo da San Severino.[331]
|
||
|
||
As the grouping of these two fruits is so insistently repeated there is
|
||
reason to think that it was no chance arrangement. The painter seems
|
||
to attach some definite meaning to their juxtaposition, and since not
|
||
Crivelli only, but also Francia and Lorenzo da San Severino, place them
|
||
together, and well forward in the picture where the eye cannot miss
|
||
them, they are apparently recognized symbols, not the whim of a single
|
||
painter.
|
||
|
||
The apple is, probably, here as elsewhere, the fatal fruit of Eden, and
|
||
the gourd may represent the fruit which is to be the antidote, in the
|
||
same sense that the grape is occasionally used by painters of the early
|
||
Flemish school. In this case the gourd would represent the Resurrection
|
||
and be the revival of a very ancient symbol which has an interesting
|
||
history. Among the wall paintings of the Catacombs the story of
|
||
Jonah is very repeatedly found. He is taken as the type of the risen
|
||
Christ,[332] since Christ Himself, answering the Pharisees, made the
|
||
comparison. He is represented both as being cast up by the fish and, in
|
||
the ensuing incident of his history, reposing under the gourd on the
|
||
east side of the city of Nineveh. The first subject being certainly
|
||
grotesque, it became more usual to depict him beneath the booth covered
|
||
with long-shaped gourds, and his sleeping figure (usually with the
|
||
legs crossed) is found constantly both among the Catacomb paintings
|
||
and on fragments of the early Christian gilded glass. Above him there
|
||
is always the same pergola-like booth with the hanging gourds. One
|
||
small disk of gold-ornamented Catacomb glass[333] has upon it the usual
|
||
gourd, but below, in place of Jonah, there is a large fish (Ichthys),
|
||
an emblem of Christ dating from the second century. Thus the type of
|
||
Christ has been replaced by His emblem, but the gourd, by association
|
||
symbol of His Resurrection, remains.
|
||
|
||
Therefore in these pictures by Crivelli the apple would be the symbol
|
||
of our death by the act of Adam, and the gourd of our Resurrection by
|
||
the act of the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
|
||
|
||
In a picture of the Fall, painted in 1570 by Floris Francesco of
|
||
Antwerp,[334] Adam sits upon the ground while Eve offers him an apple
|
||
from the tree. On the earth beside Adam lies a very large gourd. This
|
||
gourd may only exemplify the fruitfulness of Eden, or it may be another
|
||
example of the antithetical use of this symbol.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XXII
|
||
|
||
THE POMEGRANATE
|
||
|
||
|
||
Neri di Bicci,[335] Fra Angelico,[336] Filippo Lippi[337] and other
|
||
artists of the fifteenth century painted the Infant Saviour with a
|
||
pomegranate in His hand.
|
||
|
||
On the wall of the Bargello,[338] in the Chapel of the Podestà, is
|
||
a frescoed Paradise, which contains a figure long believed to be
|
||
a portrait of Dante by Giotto. He is seen in profile, wearing the
|
||
characteristic hood, and holds in his hand a small branch on which
|
||
are two ripe pomegranates. The fresco is not now considered to be by
|
||
Giotto, nor the portrait contemporaneous, but that would not materially
|
||
affect the meaning of the pomegranates, if they be a symbol, since the
|
||
painting dates from the last half of the fourteenth century.
|
||
|
||
Were it not for Dante’s pomegranate there would be no particular
|
||
reason to think that the artists of the ‘Quattrocento’ meant more than
|
||
simply to indicate some heavenly fruit when they placed the pomegranate
|
||
in the hand of the Child Christ. In accordance with the Byzantine
|
||
tradition to which Siena held, they regarded Him as the Royal Child
|
||
come to earth with Heavenly gifts in His hand; they had not yet adopted
|
||
the symbolism of the North, which saw in the Infant Christ the second
|
||
Adam, holding the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
|
||
though indeed Botticelli, who almost always gives some indication of
|
||
coming sorrow in Christ’s childhood, seems to have found some sad inner
|
||
meaning in the symbol.
|
||
|
||
But in Dante’s hand the fruit could not be the fruit of Paradise, and
|
||
it may therefore have some further meaning even when held by the Infant
|
||
Saviour.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Botticelli_ _Photo Brogi_
|
||
|
||
THE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS WITH LILIES AND
|
||
ROSE-GARLANDS
|
||
|
||
(Uffizi Gallery, Florence)]
|
||
|
||
Walter Pater writes: ‘The mystical fruit, which because of the
|
||
multitude of its seeds was to the Romans a symbol of fecundity ... to
|
||
the middle age became a symbol of the fruitful earth itself; and then
|
||
of that other seed sown in the dark underworld; and at last of the
|
||
whole hidden region, which Dante visited.... Botticelli putting it
|
||
into the childish hands of Him, who, if men went down into hell, is
|
||
there also.’
|
||
|
||
So, as the symbol of the life on the other side of death, the
|
||
pomegranate is exceedingly well placed when given to the writer of the
|
||
_Divina Commedia_, and it is even more appropriate in the hand of the
|
||
incarnate Godhead--He who holds our future destinies in the hollow of
|
||
His palm.
|
||
|
||
But it is difficult to ascertain if this was really the thought in the
|
||
minds of the Florentine artists.
|
||
|
||
Mrs Jameson considers the pomegranate to be the symbol of immortality,
|
||
or, showing the seeds, of hope in eternity.
|
||
|
||
But it would scarcely be the symbol of immortality in the Infant
|
||
Saviour’s hand, since the symbol so placed is never His exclusive
|
||
attribute, but the indication of some relationship with humanity. But
|
||
showing the seeds--and the seeds are usually shown--it might be the
|
||
symbol of a hope in eternity which He gives to man, the parallel lying
|
||
in the unexpected sweetness of the fruit within the hard rind.
|
||
|
||
But possibly the authority followed by the masters of the
|
||
‘Quattrocento,’ or by those churchmen who gave them their commissions,
|
||
was Gregory the Great, for he says: ‘The pomegranate is the emblem of
|
||
congregations because of its many seeds: also emblem of the Christian
|
||
Church because of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the
|
||
same fruit.
|
||
|
||
Following this interpretation, the pomegranate, when carried by Dante
|
||
or any other being of mortal birth, would indicate his faith in the
|
||
Holy Catholic Church.
|
||
|
||
In Northern art the pomegranate is very rare. The Flemish artists
|
||
ignore it, and those few German artists who paint it are those who
|
||
had come under Italian influence. And it does not seem entirely clear
|
||
whether those German artists who, like Hans Burgkmair,[339] paint it
|
||
in the Infant Christ’s hand, give to the Southern fruit the Southern
|
||
significance, or if for them it becomes the fruit of Eden in the hand
|
||
of the second Adam.
|
||
|
||
In scenes representing different events in the life of Christ, trees
|
||
of pomegranates are occasionally introduced. Giovanni di Paolo sets
|
||
the ‘Nativity’[340] in an orchard of pomegranates, and in a Florentine
|
||
picture of the fourteenth century[341] the newly-risen Christ is
|
||
surrounded by palms, pomegranates and flowers. These pomegranates,
|
||
however, do not seem to be used attributively but merely to give some
|
||
slight geographical indication. Bethlehem was an Eastern city; the tomb
|
||
of Christ was in an Eastern garden.
|
||
|
||
The pomegranate is also, theoretically, the emblem of the Virgin. ‘In
|
||
the symbolism of the cult of Mary, the ripe pomegranate, because of
|
||
its pleasant fragrance and its numerous seeds, represents her beauty
|
||
and many virtues, but the gradually-developing fruit refers to her
|
||
life.’[342]
|
||
|
||
‘The pomegranate with its crowned top is her as queen, and typifies
|
||
also hope and fruitfulness, the “Virginitas fecunda” of the octave of
|
||
Christmas.’[343]
|
||
|
||
Jeremy Taylor, in a beautiful passage, describes Mary as the
|
||
pomegranate tree and Christ as the fruit.
|
||
|
||
‘When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the nations
|
||
was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the
|
||
world, she brought forth the _Holy Jesus_, who, like light through a
|
||
transparent glass, past through, or a ripe pomegranate from a fruitful
|
||
tree, fell to the earth, without doing violence to its nurse and
|
||
parent.’
|
||
|
||
In art, however, the pomegranate is very seldom used as the attribute
|
||
of the Virgin. Occasionally the Florentine masters ornament the
|
||
Virgin’s throne with knobs which more or less resemble the fruit, and
|
||
Flemish artists, Memling in particular, place behind her a brocaded
|
||
panel of the well-known pomegranate design. But these pomegranate knobs
|
||
were a very usual detail in carved work, and the pomegranate pattern,
|
||
which still persists, was a standard design of the silk-weavers of
|
||
France and Italy.
|
||
|
||
The fruit itself is not used by the older masters. Even Crivelli, who
|
||
lavishes fruit of almost every sort upon his slender, long-figured
|
||
Madonnas, leaves the pomegranate aside.
|
||
|
||
In modern work, Podesti, in his vast fresco of the Immaculate
|
||
Conception,[344] has placed a large single pomegranate upon a book
|
||
arranged prominently in the foreground. It is the symbol, apparently,
|
||
of the fruitfulness of the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
The ancient Jews ornamented their temple with the pomegranate, and
|
||
their high priest’s robes were bordered with alternate bells and
|
||
pomegranates. In the Christian Church, too, they have been admitted
|
||
as decoration, though not with any very clear and definite symbolical
|
||
significance. There is a very handsome seventeenth-century altar-rail
|
||
of marble on which rest candlesticks and huge brass pomegranates before
|
||
the high altar in the ancient church of S. Cecilia in Rome; and a great
|
||
bronze pomegranate, worn by much caressing, is on the balustrade in the
|
||
tiny chapel which was once the bathroom of the saint.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XXIII
|
||
|
||
THE STRAWBERRY
|
||
|
||
|
||
The strawberry stands apart from all other symbolical fruits. It is
|
||
found in Italian, Flemish and German art, and also in the English
|
||
miniatures. There is a finely-executed Spanish miniature of the
|
||
sixteenth century in South Kensington Museum. The Pelican in her
|
||
Piety is in the centre and the border is formed of roses alternating
|
||
with strawberries. As a symbol it is not only widespread, but of
|
||
comparatively early origin. In Siena it appears as a flower of Heaven,
|
||
growing with lilies, violets and carnations, in the ‘Paradise’ of
|
||
Giovanni di Paolo painted in 1445;[345] and, almost at the same time,
|
||
a master of the Upper Rhine painted the well-known ‘Madonna of the
|
||
Strawberries,’[346] which represents the Virgin sitting upon the edge
|
||
of a raised bed filled with exquisitely-rendered strawberries. Behind
|
||
is a hedge of roses, and at her feet violets and lilies of the valley.
|
||
In the foreground is a small figure of the donor kneeling among tufts
|
||
of snowdrops. The snowdrop is rare as a symbol (though by no means
|
||
misplaced in a Madonna picture, having all the qualities, except the
|
||
perfume, of the lily of the valley), and it was probably the individual
|
||
fancy of the donor.
|
||
|
||
The strawberry is not mentioned in Scripture, neither does it seem
|
||
to have been remarked by those Fathers of the Church who concerned
|
||
themselves with symbolism, but it was very successful in its appeal
|
||
to the artists of the Renaissance. It is a very perfect fruit, with
|
||
neither thorns nor stone, but sweet, soft and delicious through and
|
||
through. Its flowers are of the whiteness of innocence and its leaves
|
||
almost of the sacred trefoil form, and since it grows upon the ground,
|
||
not on a tree, there is no possibility of its being the dread fruit of
|
||
the Tree of Knowledge.
|
||
|
||
Its meaning always appears to be the same; it is the symbol of perfect
|
||
righteousness, or the emblem of the righteous man whose fruits are
|
||
good works.
|
||
|
||
As the symbol of perfect righteousness, in Italy it is chiefly used in
|
||
‘Adorations,’ where the Infant Christ is laid upon the ground among the
|
||
grass. Botticelli seems to have been the first to have placed it among
|
||
the violets and daisies, but he had many followers, and a very charming
|
||
picture, with the little scarlet berries in the foreground, is the
|
||
‘Adoration’ by Perugino, now in Munich. Botticelli may, however, have
|
||
borrowed the symbol from Giovanni di Paolo,[347] who painted a small
|
||
minutely-finished picture of the Virgin, seated on a cushion, with
|
||
the Holy Child in her arms. Behind are fruit trees and strawberries,
|
||
violets and carnations are at her feet, and since it was usual in
|
||
Siena, in pictures where the Infant Saviour appears, to refer all
|
||
symbols to Him, they are His attributes. In German art of the fifteenth
|
||
century, on the other hand, the symbolical plants, including the
|
||
strawberry, which appears in the mystical ‘Enclosed Gardens,’ express
|
||
the virtues of Mary.
|
||
|
||
The symbolical strawberry is almost invariably accompanied by the
|
||
violet, from which we may gather that the truly fruitful soul is always
|
||
humble.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
XXIV
|
||
|
||
FRUIT IN GARLANDS
|
||
|
||
|
||
Fruit in general signifies ‘the fruits of the Spirit--joy, peace and
|
||
love.’ And therefore the painters of Northern Italy wove peach and
|
||
plum, apples and grapes into heavy garlands, which they looped above
|
||
the place where the Holy Child sat enthroned upon His mother’s knee, or
|
||
they laid fresh, ripe fruit upon the step where the Virgin’s feet were
|
||
resting.
|
||
|
||
The wreath of fruit, when festooned behind or below a saint, was more
|
||
particularly a symbol of the good works of the righteous; when looped
|
||
above his head, it is a festal wreath equalling the victor’s crown.
|
||
Such a wreath is that of mingled fruit and flowers above the head of
|
||
Mantegna’s ‘Triumphant Saint George.’[348]
|
||
|
||
But the fruit in many of the devotional pictures of the earlier
|
||
Venetian masters would seem, like the rose gardens of Florence, to be
|
||
partly votive. They wished to give of their best, and the cool fruit
|
||
which came in high-piled boats to the gardenless city among the lagoons
|
||
seemed infinitely precious to them--more precious, for they were a
|
||
practical race of traders, than the fragile blossoms of ephemeral
|
||
flowers. Besides, except for pinks, which, judging from various
|
||
pictures, grew then as now in pots along the balconies, flowers to
|
||
serve as models were rare in Venice.
|
||
|
||
Garlands of fruit, excellently modelled but somewhat wanting in
|
||
softness and bloom, are especially remarkable in the work of the
|
||
pupils of Squarcione, who taught in Padua during the last half of the
|
||
fifteenth century. This famous School of Art is known to have been well
|
||
furnished with ancient marbles of Greek and Roman origin, and it is to
|
||
be supposed that there the pupils acquired a love for the classical
|
||
festooned wreath. Mantegna’s wreaths, and those in the earlier work
|
||
of Crivelli, are firmly bound and formal. But later, Crivelli laid
|
||
classicism aside, painting fruit with a freedom and profusion which is
|
||
quite his own, though there is ever the feeling that it is sculptured
|
||
and coloured stone, not soft and perfumed fruit-flesh. He, in one
|
||
picture, paints fruit decoratively, bound with its foliage into a sort
|
||
of bower for the Virgin, places it symbolically in the hand of the
|
||
Infant Christ, and also lays it as a votive offering at the Virgin’s
|
||
feet.[349]
|
||
|
||
In a picture by Giorgio Schiavone, another pupil of Squarcione, odd
|
||
little angels offer dishes of fruit to the Infant Christ.[350]
|
||
|
||
But, except in Northern Italy, fruit in garlands was more used in
|
||
decoration than in devotional pictures. Magnificent wreaths of carved
|
||
stone fruit and foliage droop on either side of the great circular
|
||
windows of Siena Cathedral; there are heavy painted wreaths of it
|
||
beneath the figures of the Apostles in the chapel of the Vatican
|
||
decorated by Fra Angelico; and the Della Robbias enclosed some of
|
||
their most lovely works, with apples, pears, lemons, pine-cones and
|
||
pomegranates, growing stiffly and beautifully into a symmetrical
|
||
border. Fruit-forms were, indeed, infinitely better suited to the
|
||
Della Robbia medium than were the delicate petals of flowers.
|
||
|
||
The Florentines, too, often placed their Madonnas in elaborate wooden
|
||
frames of carved and gilded fruit--remembering perhaps the epithet of
|
||
Saint Bernard, who styled the Virgin Mary ‘the sublime fruit of the
|
||
earth,’[351] finding in her the fulfilment of the prophecy:
|
||
|
||
‘In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious,
|
||
and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely.’[352]
|
||
|
||
But many of these garlands of fruit, or of mixed fruit and flowers,
|
||
are entirely decorative with no hidden meaning. They were a very usual
|
||
festal decoration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and when
|
||
swung above the head of Memling’s ‘Enthroned Madonna,’[353] they are
|
||
no more a symbol than is the carpet beneath her feet, for an almost
|
||
identical wreath, held in place by the same small _putti_, is above the
|
||
throne in Gerard David’s ‘Judgment of Cambyses,’[354] while one which
|
||
is very similar hangs above the enthroned ‘Emperor Sigis mondo,’[355]
|
||
incised upon the pavement of Siena Cathedral. These wreaths distinguish
|
||
the throne as being more than an ordinary seat, but, beyond vaguely
|
||
indicating pomp and splendour, they have no special meaning.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration: _The Sacred Heart (19th Century--German)_]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE PARADISE OF GIOVANNI DI PAOLO
|
||
|
||
|
||
In the Gallery of Siena there is a panel by Giovanni di Paola, the
|
||
contemporary and occasional assistant of the better-known Sano di
|
||
Pietro. The panel, which was painted in 1453, represents the Last
|
||
Judgment, and, naturally, it is the portion of it which is given to
|
||
Paradise, that is interesting because of its flower symbolism.
|
||
|
||
Heaven is depicted as a hill, for in the 15th century the prophet
|
||
Esdras was the authority relied on for descriptions of the heavenly
|
||
land, and Paradise, he says, has ‘seven mighty mountains on which grow
|
||
roses and lilies.’[356]
|
||
|
||
At the summit of the hill there are six fruit-bearing trees, for the
|
||
prophet continues, ‘Saith the Lord, ... I have sanctified and prepared
|
||
for thee twelve trees laden with diverse fruit.’[357]
|
||
|
||
There are six trees, not twelve, in this picture, for, by a convention
|
||
common enough in early art, where the space did not admit of a certain
|
||
number, that number was halved.
|
||
|
||
Beneath the trees wander the happy souls, of whom the greater part
|
||
appear to have taken holy orders when in the flesh. Those just arrived
|
||
are welcomed joyfully by the angels or by friends who had preceded them.
|
||
|
||
On the grassy bank there are lilies, the symbol of purity; the
|
||
carnation, equalling the rose as the flower of divine love, the violet
|
||
of humility and the strawberry, whose fruit symbolises the good works
|
||
of the righteous.
|
||
|
||
These are the values of the flowers as symbols; as emblems they
|
||
translate this Heaven as a perfected counter-part of the Church upon
|
||
Earth, ‘for’ says Durandus, commenting on the text, ‘See the smell of
|
||
my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.’ ‘This
|
||
field is the Church, which is verdant with flowers, which shineth with
|
||
virtues, which is fragrant with good works; and wherein be the roses
|
||
of martyrs, the lilies of virgins, the violets of confessors, and the
|
||
verdure of beginners in the faith.’ Following the same authority, the
|
||
trees are emblems of righteous men, rich in good works.[358]
|
||
|
||
So for three different reasons the flowers in this painted Paradise
|
||
appealed to the devout. They help to give a realistic picture of
|
||
Heaven, presenting in form and colour the description of the prophet;
|
||
they express mystically the Christian graces; they represent, to the
|
||
instructed, the bands of martyrs, the choirs of virgins, and the
|
||
countless happy souls for which the painter had no space.
|
||
|
||
The little childish beings, with wounds upon their necks or sides, are
|
||
the Holy Innocents. Two climb up the lilies which are their attributes
|
||
as virgin martyrs. Though unbaptised, the Innocents, since they died
|
||
for Christ, were permitted to enter Heaven.
|
||
|
||
In the foreground, among the violets, are hares, the hare being an
|
||
ancient emblem of a Christian, founded upon the words of Tertullian:
|
||
|
||
‘Upon us, as were we hares, is the hunt let loose.’[359]
|
||
|
||
Also the early naturalists averred that the hare slept with his eyes
|
||
open; whence the prayer of Saint Mectilda:
|
||
|
||
‘Grant, O Lord, that, like the hare, I may watch for Thee in Spirit,
|
||
even while my body takes its needful repose.’[360]
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Giovanni di Paolo_ _Photo Brogi_
|
||
|
||
PARADISE
|
||
|
||
(Instituto delle Belle Arti, Siena)]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
|
||
|
||
BY
|
||
|
||
HUBERT VAN EYKE
|
||
|
||
|
||
On the 6th of May, 1432, the great altar-piece painted by Hubert and
|
||
Jan van Eyke, entitled ‘The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,’ was erected
|
||
as a finished work in the Church of S. Bavon in Ghent.
|
||
|
||
Each of its twelve panels is extremely interesting but the detail which
|
||
is most important in connection with flower symbolism is the crown of
|
||
the Madonna. Mary as Queen of Heaven, is seated on the right hand of
|
||
God the Father, her head is slightly bowed as she reads from the book
|
||
which she holds open.
|
||
|
||
Her crown is of gold, set with pearls, sapphires and rubies. Above each
|
||
large square-cut ruby is placed a lily with two dark-blue columbines
|
||
at its base. Above the sapphires and alternate with the lilies, are
|
||
roses, each surmounted by three slender stalks of lily of the valley. A
|
||
cluster of diaphanous gold stars form a sort of aureole.
|
||
|
||
The symbolism of jewels is complicated and confused, varying with
|
||
different authorities, but that of flowers is almost always unchanged.
|
||
In this crown the _lilium candidum_, which takes the place of the
|
||
golden fleurs-de-lys that ornament the crowns of earthly queens,
|
||
indicates the purity of body and of soul by which the Virgin had found
|
||
favour in God’s sight. The roses, three in number, denote the Divine
|
||
Love of the Holy Trinity, and since these are placed, though singly, in
|
||
a crown, they hold also some measure of heavenly joy.
|
||
|
||
The seven blooms of the columbine, symbolize the seven gifts of the
|
||
Holy Spirit, which, when attributed to the Virgin, are, Faith, Hope,
|
||
Charity, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Strength.
|
||
|
||
The lily of the valley, found only in northern symbolism, typifies the
|
||
meekness and ‘low estate’ of the ‘hand-maid of the Lord.’
|
||
|
||
The twelve stars suggested by the starry crown of the Apocalypse, are
|
||
said by some authorities to represent the twelve Apostles, illustrating
|
||
Mary’s title of ‘Regina Apostolorum.’ The ‘great wonder’ had appeared
|
||
in Heaven and the lily-like maid was now a queen, ‘the woman clothed
|
||
with the sun, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Hubert van Eyke_
|
||
|
||
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
|
||
|
||
(From copy by Coxie, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
|
||
|
||
BY
|
||
|
||
HUGO VAN DER GOES.
|
||
|
||
|
||
There has been lately placed in the Uffizi Gallery, the large
|
||
‘Adoration of the Shepherds,’ by Hugo van der Goes, which was painted
|
||
between 1470 and 1475 by order of Tommaso Portinari, agent of the
|
||
Medici in Bruges, for the Chapel of the Florentine Hospital of Santa
|
||
Maria Nuova.
|
||
|
||
It is a tryptich. On the side wings are the donor and his family; in
|
||
the centre is the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds.’
|
||
|
||
Upon the ground in the courtyard of a stable, the Holy Child lies in
|
||
a pool of light emanating from Himself. His mother kneels beside Him,
|
||
and plain little angels with jewelled head-dresses form a circle round
|
||
them. To the right is a group of adoring shepherds--to the left Saint
|
||
Joseph.
|
||
|
||
In the foreground of the picture, before the Infant Christ, there lies
|
||
a sheaf of corn. There are also two vases. One is of pottery, with
|
||
a conventional design of grapes and vine leaves, and is filled with
|
||
orange lilies and the purple and the white iris. In the other, which
|
||
is of transparent glass, there is columbine and three red carnations;
|
||
upon the ground are scattered blue and white violets. Each flower is
|
||
painted with the most exquisite precision. Here the flower symbols
|
||
all emphasize the spiritual significance of the scene. The scattered
|
||
violets symbolize humility, for the King of Heaven lies on the ground
|
||
as a little Child. The white ones among them may denote the innocence
|
||
of His babyhood. The transparent glass so often seen in Annunciations,
|
||
is the symbol of His immaculate conception, the group of carnations,
|
||
alike in shape and colour, typifies the divine love of the triune
|
||
Godhead, which moved the Son to take a human form for our salvation.
|
||
The seven blossoms of the columbine, the flower of the dove, are
|
||
symbols of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit with which He was endowed
|
||
at birth. The lilies in the vase are His own emblem as the King of
|
||
Heaven, since He said: ‘I am the flower of the field, and the lily of
|
||
the valleys.’ They are not the _lilium candidum_, the flower of the
|
||
Madonna’s purity, but the royal lilies of the field, orange, purple and
|
||
white. Even Solomon, in gold, purple and fine linen, ‘was not arrayed
|
||
like one of these.’
|
||
|
||
Lastly there is the vine, pictured upon the vase, and the sheaf of
|
||
corn, the eucharistic substances which in the sacrifice of the Mass,
|
||
repeat the sacrifice for which He was born into the world as a little
|
||
child.
|
||
|
||
It has been said, and reproachfully, of the Northern artists that they
|
||
preferred gold, jewels and rich embroideries to the more ephemeral
|
||
loveliness of flowers. This dictum may be just when applied to the
|
||
early German schools; of Flemish Art it is not true. In this picture,
|
||
for instance, the little angels are richly dressed but not rose-crowned
|
||
like their Florentine cousins. They wear instead circlets of precious
|
||
stones and pearls, from which spring aigrettes with pendant jewels.
|
||
They carry no flowers and no flowers are used to fill vacant spaces in
|
||
the picture. Flowers are reserved instead for the highest use of all
|
||
and are placed in the forefront of the scene to represent the virtues
|
||
of the Holy One.
|
||
|
||
Hugo van der Goes has painted almost these same flowers of the
|
||
Adoration in his Fall.[361] Adam and Eve stand beneath the tree from
|
||
which Eve reaches an apple. The lizard-bodied tempter stands behind. In
|
||
the centre of the foreground, in front of the figures, is the iris, the
|
||
columbine, the violet, a rose-bush not yet in bloom and the strawberry.
|
||
There is also a pansy (which is rare as a symbol, except in England
|
||
where it was named Herb Trinity,) and its meaning in this picture does
|
||
not seem clear.
|
||
|
||
These flowers, used elsewhere as the emblems and attributes of Jesus
|
||
Christ, here are introduced to recall the coming of the ‘second Adam,’
|
||
exactly reversing the symbolism which places an apple in the hand of
|
||
the Infant Christ.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Hugo van der Goes_ _Photo Brogi_
|
||
|
||
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
|
||
|
||
(Uffizi Gallery, Florence)]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
|
||
|
||
BY
|
||
|
||
MURILLO
|
||
|
||
|
||
In the 17th century the Spanish Inquisition appointed certain
|
||
_familiares_ whose warrant ran:
|
||
|
||
‘We give him commission and charge him hence forward that he take
|
||
particular care to inspect and visit all paintings of sacred
|
||
subjects which may stand in shops or in public places; if he finds
|
||
anything to object to in them he is to take the picture before the
|
||
Lords of the Inquisition.’
|
||
|
||
Murillo, painting for the Church in Seville, the most orthodox city of
|
||
Spain, may therefore be reckoned correct in his method of presenting
|
||
sacred subjects. At the period in which he painted, the particular form
|
||
of Madonna picture most often ordered by the Spanish Church, was that
|
||
known as the ‘Immaculate Conception.’
|
||
|
||
The sinless birth of the Virgin was a dogma that had been adopted
|
||
enthusiastically by the Spanish, so much so that Philip III and Philip
|
||
IV sent special embassies to Rome to obtain more explicit papal
|
||
recognition of the doctrine. It did not, however, become an article
|
||
of faith till 1854 and, as a subject, it is chiefly confined to the
|
||
Spanish School.
|
||
|
||
The scheme of the picture is invariably taken from the Revelation of
|
||
St. John.
|
||
|
||
‘And there appeared a great wonder in Heaven; a woman clothed with
|
||
the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of
|
||
twelve stars.’
|
||
|
||
It was usual to add a group of _putti_ about the Virgin’s feet (her
|
||
feet, according to an injunction of the Inquisition as to ‘decency’
|
||
being carefully covered) and these _putti_ almost always carried
|
||
flowers, the rose, lily, olive and palm. Sometimes the iris was added,
|
||
and occasionally the iris alone was used.[362] Very often a _putto_
|
||
carries a looking-glass,[363] a symbol of the Immaculate Conception
|
||
which appears to be of Spanish origin, but which is perhaps a variation
|
||
or development of the transparent vase, which in the 15th century art
|
||
was a symbol of the virgin birth of Christ. The idea is that the glass,
|
||
whatever be the image cast upon it, remains in itself unstained.
|
||
|
||
In Murillo’s masterpiece, ‘_La Purissima_’ of the Prado, the flowers
|
||
indicate Mary’s virtues. The rose, symbol of love and mercy, show
|
||
her as the _Mater misericordiæ_; the lily shows her purity--she is
|
||
‘_La Purissima_:’ the palm of triumph is hers as the Queen of Heaven
|
||
and the olive tells of the healing she brings to mankind; she is the
|
||
_Consolatrix Afflictorum_.
|
||
|
||
And the Church having identified the Virgin with the ‘Wisdom’ of the
|
||
24th Chapter of Ecclesiasticus, these symbols are also her direct
|
||
emblems, for, says Wisdom:
|
||
|
||
‘I was exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and as a rose-plant in
|
||
Jericho, as a fair olive-tree in a pleasant field.’
|
||
|
||
And the lily is always her emblem as ‘The lily of the valleys.’
|
||
|
||
It is noticeable that this figure of the Virgin, realized from the
|
||
word picture of the Revelation of Saint John, was one that appealed
|
||
strongly to the Spanish. She is ‘clothed with the sun and the moon
|
||
under her feet.’ The moon is represented as the crescent moon which was
|
||
the sacred device of the followers of Mahomet, and which had surmounted
|
||
innumerable mosques throughout the Iberian peninsula for more than
|
||
five hundred years. Ferdinand, husband of Isabella, put an end to
|
||
the Moorish dominion in 1492, but the impress of the Moor is to this
|
||
day strong on the land, and in the 17th century it seemed a fitting
|
||
thing that the Virgin’s foot should be upon the hated crescent which
|
||
symbolized Moorish rule and the faith of Islam. It was therefore, as
|
||
a symbol of the Mohamedan faith [rather than as a symbol of chastity
|
||
through its connection with the Goddess Diana, as is sometimes
|
||
suggested], that representations of the Virgin with her feet upon a
|
||
crescent, became so popular in Spain.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Murillo_ _Photo Anderson_
|
||
|
||
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
|
||
|
||
(Prado, Madrid)]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY VIRGIN
|
||
|
||
BY
|
||
|
||
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
|
||
|
||
|
||
In the year 1848, three young English painters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
|
||
John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, founded the Preraphaelite
|
||
Brotherhood, the aim of which was to bring back to modern art the
|
||
sincerity of those painters who had preceded Raphael.
|
||
|
||
The original characteristics of the brotherhood’s work were a
|
||
simplicity in the types chosen and a workmanship almost Flemish in its
|
||
careful and minute finish. But later, and more particularly in the work
|
||
of Rossetti, ‘Preraphaelism’ became associated with a certain mysticism
|
||
of subject whose deeper meaning was accentuated and elucidated by the
|
||
use of symbols and more especially flower symbols.
|
||
|
||
Rossetti’s earliest exhibited work was ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,’
|
||
painted in 1849.
|
||
|
||
The Virgin with Saint Anne by her side, sits at an embroidery frame and
|
||
works upon a strip of red material the lily with two flowers and a bud
|
||
which grows in a vase before her. A little rosy winged angel waters the
|
||
lily, and, lying crossed upon the ground, is a seven-leaved palm and a
|
||
seven-thorned briar, united by a little scroll bearing the words ‘_Tot
|
||
dolores, tot gaudia_.’
|
||
|
||
The second part of the double sonnet written by the artist for this
|
||
picture explains to some extent the symbolism.
|
||
|
||
II
|
||
|
||
These are the symbols. On that cloth of red
|
||
I’ the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each
|
||
Except the second of its points, to teach
|
||
That Christ is not yet born. The books--whose head
|
||
Is golden charity, as Paul hath said--
|
||
Those virtues are wherein the soul is rich:
|
||
Therefore on them the lily standeth, which
|
||
Is innocence, being interpreted.
|
||
|
||
The seven-thorn’d briar and the palm seven-leaved,
|
||
Are her great sorrow and her great reward.
|
||
Until the end be full, the Holy One
|
||
Abides without. She soon shall have achieved
|
||
Her perfect purity: yea, God the Lord
|
||
Shall soon vouchsafe His Son to be her Son.
|
||
|
||
Behind the Virgin is the trellis of the ‘Enclosed Garden.’ Beyond--for
|
||
still the ‘Holy One abides without’--is the vine, emblem of the ‘True
|
||
Vine,’ the figure of Saint Joseph, who tends it, forecasting that he
|
||
would be the guardian of Christ’s infancy. Upon the trellis, up which
|
||
wreathes the white convolvulus, used in the 15th century as the symbol
|
||
of humility, sits the Holy Dove.
|
||
|
||
Finally, upon the balustrade is a rose in a transparent vase, the rose
|
||
of divine love conjoined with the symbol of transcendant purity.
|
||
|
||
[Illustration:
|
||
|
||
_Dante Gabriel Rossetti_ _Photo Mansell_
|
||
|
||
THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY VIRGIN]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
LIST OF AUTHORITIES
|
||
|
||
|
||
Antony, Joseph, _Symbolik der Katholischen Kirchen Gebrauche_
|
||
|
||
Archæologia
|
||
|
||
Augustine, St, _Confessions_
|
||
|
||
Beaumont, de, _Recherches sur l’origine du Blazon et en particulier
|
||
la Fleur-de-Lis_
|
||
|
||
Bernard of Clairvaux, St, _Sermons_
|
||
|
||
_Biblia Pauperum_, Heidelberg Copy, 1440; German Ed., 1471,
|
||
Wolfenbüttel Copy
|
||
|
||
_Byzantine Guide to Painting_ (Didron’s Translation)
|
||
|
||
Dante, _Divina Commedia_
|
||
|
||
Didron, _Christian Iconography_
|
||
|
||
Durandus, _Rational of the Divine Offices_
|
||
|
||
Edmonson, _Complete Book of Heraldry_, 1780
|
||
|
||
Ford, _Spanish Handbook_ (First Edition)
|
||
|
||
Hirn, Yrjö, _The Sacred Shrine_
|
||
|
||
Huysman, J. K., _La Cathédrale_
|
||
|
||
Jacobus de Voragine, _Legenda Aurea_
|
||
|
||
Jameson, Mrs, _Sacred and Legendary Art_
|
||
|
||
Jenner, Mrs H., _Christian Symbolism_
|
||
|
||
Liebman, P. S., _Kleine Handwörterbuch der Christlichen Symbolik_
|
||
|
||
Martin, Arthur, _Mélanges d’Archéologie_
|
||
|
||
Mectilda, St, _Spiritual Grace_
|
||
|
||
Menzel, Wolfgang, _Christliche Symbolik_
|
||
|
||
Neale, J. M., _Hymni Ecclesiae_
|
||
|
||
Northcote and Brownlow, _Roma Sotterana_
|
||
|
||
Schmid, A., _Christliche Symbole aus alter und neuer Zeit_
|
||
|
||
Smith, _Classical Dictionary_
|
||
|
||
Strabo, Walafrid, _Hortulus_
|
||
|
||
_Syrian Codice of 586_, Laurentian Library
|
||
|
||
Taylor, Jeremy, _The History of the Life and Death of the Holy Jesus_
|
||
|
||
Tertullian
|
||
|
||
Twining, Louisa, _Symbols and Emblems_
|
||
|
||
Vasari, _Lives of the Painters_
|
||
|
||
Venturi, _Storia dell’ Arte Italiana_
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
INDEX OF ARTISTS
|
||
|
||
|
||
Angelico da Fiesole, 81, 90, 131, 144, 167, 245, 261
|
||
|
||
Antinoles, José, 216
|
||
|
||
|
||
Barabino, Niccolo, 122
|
||
|
||
Bellini, Giov., 232, 241
|
||
|
||
Bonfigli, 91, 158
|
||
|
||
Botticelli, 45, 71, 75, 85, 100, 119, 122, 123, 124, 128, 166, 213,
|
||
238, 246, 262, 263
|
||
|
||
Botticini, 77, 188, 213
|
||
|
||
Breu, Jörg, 107
|
||
|
||
Bruder Wilhelm, 210
|
||
|
||
Bürgkmair, Hans, 127, 255, 264
|
||
|
||
|
||
Cano, Alonzo, 128
|
||
|
||
Carotto, Giov. Franc., 188
|
||
|
||
Carpaccio, Vittore, 138
|
||
|
||
Cavallini, 59, 164
|
||
|
||
Cimabue, 138
|
||
|
||
Crivelli, 192, 257, 273
|
||
|
||
|
||
Donatello, 158
|
||
|
||
Duccio di Buoninsegna, 59, 144
|
||
|
||
Dürer, Albert, 39, 51, 68, 173
|
||
|
||
|
||
Filarete, Ant., 44
|
||
|
||
Francesca, Piero della, 140
|
||
|
||
Franciabigio, Francesco, 202
|
||
|
||
Fries, Hans, 156
|
||
|
||
|
||
Gaddi, Taddeo, 226
|
||
|
||
Ghirlandaio, Dom., 67, 167, 200
|
||
|
||
Giambono, 208
|
||
|
||
Giotto, 59, 157, 166, 200, 224, 226
|
||
|
||
Giovanni di Paolo, 177, 268, 270
|
||
|
||
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 98, 214
|
||
|
||
Grünwald, Mat., 255
|
||
|
||
Guariento, 180
|
||
|
||
|
||
Holbein, Hans, 256
|
||
|
||
Holman Hunt, 40, 129
|
||
|
||
|
||
Joos van Cleeve, 250
|
||
|
||
|
||
Leighton, Frederick, 48
|
||
|
||
Leonardo da Vinci, 12, 39, 166
|
||
|
||
Liberale da Verona, 222
|
||
|
||
Lippi, Fra Filippo, 45, 167, 186, 245, 261
|
||
|
||
Lochnar, Stephen, 210
|
||
|
||
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 114, 142, 177, 181, 242
|
||
|
||
Lorenzo da San Severino, 258
|
||
|
||
Lucas van Leyden, 51, 227, 254
|
||
|
||
Luini, 93, 109, 231
|
||
|
||
|
||
Mabuse, 94, 119, 204, 239
|
||
|
||
Mantegna, 120, 127, 272
|
||
|
||
Maratta, Carlo, 39
|
||
|
||
Master of Flémalle, 63, 69, 165
|
||
|
||
Master of the Bartholomew Altar, 110, 195
|
||
|
||
Master of the Carnations, 86
|
||
|
||
Master of the Sterzing Altar, 144, 189
|
||
|
||
Memling, 50, 63, 65, 66, 100, 119, 168, 243, 245
|
||
|
||
Michael-Angelo Buonarroti, 12, 191
|
||
|
||
Moretto, 119, 158
|
||
|
||
Murillo, 75, 115, 233
|
||
|
||
|
||
Neri di Bicci, 45, 77, 245, 261
|
||
|
||
Niccolo d’Apulia, 164
|
||
|
||
|
||
Orcagna, 59, 179
|
||
|
||
|
||
Palmezzano da Forli, 68
|
||
|
||
Perréal, J., 158, 174
|
||
|
||
Perugino, 45, 276
|
||
|
||
Pesello, 67, 169, 192
|
||
|
||
Pinturicchio, 172
|
||
|
||
Pisano, 209
|
||
|
||
Podesti, 267
|
||
|
||
|
||
Raphael Santi da Urbino, 12, 93, 213
|
||
|
||
Robbia, Della, 274
|
||
|
||
Romano, Giulio, 214
|
||
|
||
Rosselli, Cosimo, 108, 158
|
||
|
||
Rossello di Jacopo Franchi, 188
|
||
|
||
Rossetti, D. G., 40, 175, 185, 199
|
||
|
||
Rubens, P. P., 20, 51, 140, 253
|
||
|
||
|
||
Sano di Pietro, 38, 242, 243
|
||
|
||
Sassetta, 223
|
||
|
||
Sassoferrato, 130
|
||
|
||
Schiavone, Giorgio, 274
|
||
|
||
Schöngaur, 123, 247
|
||
|
||
Schüchlin, Hans, 110
|
||
|
||
Seghers, 131
|
||
|
||
Signorelli Luca, 47, 74, 195, 204, 206, 231
|
||
|
||
Simone Martini, 59, 91, 117, 178, 179, 231
|
||
|
||
Sodoma (Bazzi), 109, 123, 213
|
||
|
||
Spinello Aretino, 142, 167, 181
|
||
|
||
Squarcione, 203
|
||
|
||
Stefano da Zevio (da Verona), 100
|
||
|
||
|
||
Taddeo di Bartolo, 167
|
||
|
||
Tobar, Alfonso da, 82
|
||
|
||
Trevisani, Francesco, 196
|
||
|
||
|
||
Van der Goes, Hugo, 65, 68, 85, 106, 108, 192, 252
|
||
|
||
Van der Weyden, Roger, 165
|
||
|
||
Van Eyck, Hubert, 12, 98, 106
|
||
|
||
Van Eyck, Jan, 63, 165, 167, 241
|
||
|
||
Vanni, Andrea, 177
|
||
|
||
Vasari, G., 248
|
||
|
||
Veronese, Paul, 228
|
||
|
||
|
||
Watts, F. G., 40
|
||
|
||
Wolgemut, 156
|
||
|
||
|
||
Zurburan, 76, 77, 12
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
INDEX OF FLOWERS
|
||
|
||
|
||
Acanthus, Chap. xii.
|
||
|
||
Almond, 197
|
||
|
||
Anemone, 60, 93
|
||
|
||
Apple, 14, 32, 94, 119, 240, Chap. xx.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Balsam, 197, 218
|
||
|
||
Briars, 33
|
||
|
||
Buckthorn, 33
|
||
|
||
Burning Bush, 132, 192
|
||
|
||
|
||
Carnation, Chap. vi., 190, 191
|
||
|
||
Cedar, 26, 217
|
||
|
||
Cherries, 243, 245
|
||
|
||
Clover, _see_ Shamrock
|
||
|
||
Columbine, 30; Chap. viii., 174, 198
|
||
|
||
Convolvulus, 29, 48
|
||
|
||
Cyclamen, 33
|
||
|
||
|
||
Daisy, 31, 45, 110, 167
|
||
|
||
Dandelion, 34, 195, 199
|
||
|
||
|
||
Fig, 255, 256
|
||
|
||
Fleur-de-lys, 36, Chap. xiii.
|
||
|
||
Flower, Community of the, 41
|
||
|
||
Flower, Our Lady of the, 81
|
||
|
||
Frankincense, 198
|
||
|
||
Fruit in Garlands, Chap. xxiv.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Gold flower, 73
|
||
|
||
Gourd, Chap. xxi.
|
||
|
||
Grapes, 238, 254
|
||
|
||
|
||
Heath, 29
|
||
|
||
Hellebore, 33
|
||
|
||
Hemlock, 130
|
||
|
||
Hyssop, 33
|
||
|
||
|
||
Iris, 36; Chap. iv., 168, 198
|
||
|
||
Ivy, 130
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jasmine, 31, 48, 167, 201
|
||
|
||
|
||
Laurel, 116, 177
|
||
|
||
Lemon, 241
|
||
|
||
Lettuce, 29
|
||
|
||
Lily, 14, 24; Chap. iii., 92, 198, 211, 215
|
||
|
||
Lily of Florence, 81
|
||
|
||
Lily of the Angel Gabriel, Chap. xv.
|
||
|
||
Lily of the Annunciation, Chap. xiv.
|
||
|
||
Lily of the Saints, Chap. xviii.
|
||
|
||
Lily of the Valley, 198, 207
|
||
|
||
Lilies of the Virgin’s Tomb, 213
|
||
|
||
|
||
Mandrake, 33
|
||
|
||
Musk flower, 197
|
||
|
||
Myrrh, 24, 25, 218
|
||
|
||
Myrtle, 197, 201
|
||
|
||
|
||
Nettle, 25, 33
|
||
|
||
|
||
Oleander, 227
|
||
|
||
Olive, 24, 36, Chap. ix.
|
||
|
||
Orange, 242
|
||
|
||
|
||
Palm, 24, 26, Chap. xi.
|
||
|
||
Palm-tree, 137, 138, 218
|
||
|
||
Pansy, 32
|
||
|
||
Passion Flower, 195
|
||
|
||
Pear, 119, 252
|
||
|
||
Pomegranate, 98, 119, 218, 245, Chap. xxii.
|
||
|
||
Poppy, 33
|
||
|
||
|
||
Quince, 119, 239, 241
|
||
|
||
|
||
Rose gardens, 97, 100
|
||
|
||
Rose garlands, Chap. vii.
|
||
|
||
Rose, golden, 101, 102, 103
|
||
|
||
Rose hedge, 99
|
||
|
||
Rose of Charity, 29, 208
|
||
|
||
Rose of Divine Love, 24, 28; Chap. v., 172, 190, 198
|
||
|
||
Rose of Martyrdom, 72
|
||
|
||
Rose of Venus, 101, 102, 103
|
||
|
||
|
||
Saffron, 26
|
||
|
||
Shamrock, 30, 191
|
||
|
||
Snowdrop, 269
|
||
|
||
Spices, 24
|
||
|
||
Strawberry, 45, 110; Chap. xxiii., 198
|
||
|
||
Sunflower, 199
|
||
|
||
Sycamore, 26
|
||
|
||
|
||
Thistle, 195
|
||
|
||
Thorns, 33, 77; Chap. x., 216
|
||
|
||
Thorns, Crown of, 126, 127, 128, 131
|
||
|
||
Turpentine Tree, 24
|
||
|
||
|
||
Vine, 23; Chap. xix.
|
||
|
||
Violet, 28, 45, 48, 110, 197, 198, 210
|
||
|
||
|
||
Water-lily, 29
|
||
|
||
Willow, 195
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
FOOTNOTES
|
||
|
||
|
||
[1] Dr March states very clearly the difference between a symbol and
|
||
an emblem. ‘A symbol stands for an abstract idea, an emblem denotes
|
||
a concrete thing, an attribute appears in apposition with the person
|
||
it qualifies; for example, in a presentment of the Blessed Virgin,
|
||
the lily that she holds in her hand or that flowers by her side is
|
||
her attribute. When the lily appears alone it represents the Queen of
|
||
Heaven and is her emblem, but if it indicates purity it is a symbol.’
|
||
|
||
[2] Ghent Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[3] The Prado, Madrid.
|
||
|
||
[4] Antwerp Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[5] Author of _Liber aggregationis, seu Liber mirabilium de virtutibus
|
||
herbarum, lapidum et animalium_.
|
||
|
||
[6] Authoress of _The Garden of Health_.
|
||
|
||
[7] ‘This is that herb which such physicians as are licensed to
|
||
blaspheme by authority without danger of having their tongues burned
|
||
through with a hot iron called an herb of the Trinity; it is also
|
||
called, by those who are more moderate, three faces in a hood ... and
|
||
in Sussex we call them pancies.’ Culpeper’s _Herbal_.
|
||
|
||
[8] C. Marriott.
|
||
|
||
[9] Corsini Gallery, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[10] Naples Museum.
|
||
|
||
[11] Stroganoff Collection, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[12] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[13] Ex Convent of S. Apollonia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[14] Bargello, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[15] Adoration, Pitti Palace, private apartments.
|
||
|
||
[16] Cathedral, Perugia.
|
||
|
||
[17] J. K. Huysmans, _La Cathédrale_.
|
||
|
||
[18] Attributed to Giotto. Collection of A. E. Street, Esq.
|
||
|
||
[19] Isaiah XXXV. 1.
|
||
|
||
[20] Wolfenbüttel Copy, Bibliothèque Nationale.
|
||
|
||
[21] Marienpfarrkirchen, Danzig.
|
||
|
||
[22] Town Museum, Leyden.
|
||
|
||
[23] ‘The Smaller Passion,’ British Museum.
|
||
|
||
[24] J. K. Huysmans, _La Cathédrale_.
|
||
|
||
[25] _Complete Book of Heraldry_, 1780. vol. i.
|
||
|
||
[26] ‘The effigies of the Kings of Navarre, successors to Garcias,
|
||
are still to be seen with this order about their necks in the Church
|
||
of St Mary at Nagera, St Saviour’s de Layra and St Mary la Reale of
|
||
Pompelona, as also in the church at Ronceneux, and at St John’s de la
|
||
Pigna.’ (Edmondson.)
|
||
|
||
[27] Now in Seville Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[28] Solomon’s Song v. 9.
|
||
|
||
[29]
|
||
|
||
‘Ut ipsa corporis species simulacrum fuerit mentis.’
|
||
_De Verginit_, lib. ii. chap. 2.
|
||
|
||
[30] S. Maria Trastevere, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[31] National Gallery, London.
|
||
|
||
[32] Lower Church, Assisi.
|
||
|
||
[33] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[34] Or San Michele, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[35] Frankfort-on-the-Maine.
|
||
|
||
[36] Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[37] Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[38] Royal Museum, Antwerp.
|
||
|
||
[39] Coll. Radziwill, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[40] Royal Gallery, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[41] Prado, Madrid.
|
||
|
||
[42] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[43] ‘Coronation of the Virgin,’ shrine of Saint Ursula, Bruges.
|
||
|
||
[44] ‘Christ surrounded by Angels,’ Royal Museum, Antwerp.
|
||
|
||
[45] ‘Madonna with the Child,’ Marienpfarrkirche, Danzig.
|
||
|
||
[46] _Purga_, xxix. 81.
|
||
|
||
[47] _See_ Chapter XIV., ‘The Lily of the Annunciation.’
|
||
|
||
[48] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[49] The Brera, Milan.
|
||
|
||
[50] The Rudolphinum, Prague.
|
||
|
||
[51] Chaucer, _The Knight’s Tale_.
|
||
|
||
[52] Schifanoja Palace, Ferrara.
|
||
|
||
[53] Botticelli, Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[54] Walter Pater, ‘Sandro Botticelli.’
|
||
|
||
[55] _Legenda Aurea._
|
||
|
||
[56] William Dunbar.
|
||
|
||
[57] _The Book of Spiritual Grace._
|
||
|
||
[58] Orvieto Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[59] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[60] The _Portincula_ or _Porzuincola_ (the little portion) built by
|
||
Saint Benedict and rebuilt by Saint Francis was the first church of the
|
||
Franciscan order. It is now enclosed by the Church of S. Maria degli
|
||
Angeli, and, close by, the rose-bushes of the legend, still thornless,
|
||
are shown.
|
||
|
||
[61] Prado, Madrid.
|
||
|
||
[62] Cadiz.
|
||
|
||
[63] Wilton House.
|
||
|
||
[64] Museo Provincial, Seville.
|
||
|
||
[65] Florence. To be placed in the Riccardi Palace.
|
||
|
||
[66] Palazzo Pitti.
|
||
|
||
[67] Robert de la Condamine, _The Upper Garden_.
|
||
|
||
[68] In the Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal, Paris.
|
||
|
||
[69] British Museum.
|
||
|
||
[70] Dante.
|
||
|
||
[71] In France at the same period it was very usual to place a
|
||
‘fleur-de-lys’ in the Madonna’s hand. For instance, the beautiful
|
||
statuette in silver gilt of the early fourteenth century, now in the
|
||
Louvre, carries a ‘fleur-de-lys’ of crystal in the right hand.
|
||
|
||
[72] The Prado, Madrid.
|
||
|
||
[73] Private apartments, Pitti Palace, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[74] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[75] An exception is the Assumption by Fungai in the Belle Arti
|
||
of Siena, where white roses and red carnations fill the tomb. The
|
||
prejudice appears to have been against the red rose.
|
||
|
||
[76] Kunst Museum, Bern.
|
||
|
||
[77] ‘The Key’ of Saint Melitus.
|
||
|
||
[78] ‘Hortulus,’ Walafrid Strabo.
|
||
|
||
[79] ‘Spiritual Grace,’ Saint Mectilda.
|
||
|
||
[80] The Wisdom of Solomon ii. 8.
|
||
|
||
[81] _Passio S.S. Jacobi, Mariani et aliorum martyrum in Numidia._
|
||
|
||
[82] _Sensations d’Italie._
|
||
|
||
[83] S. Maria Novella, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[84] The Brera, Milan.
|
||
|
||
[85] _Legenda Aurea._
|
||
|
||
[86] Prado, Madrid.
|
||
|
||
[87] Ghent Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[88] _Paradiso_, xxx. 114.
|
||
|
||
[89] _Ibid._ 121.
|
||
|
||
[90] 2 Esdras ii. 18–19.
|
||
|
||
[91] Written by the monk Dionysius of Mount Athos in the twelfth
|
||
century. Translated by M. Didron.
|
||
|
||
[92] Adoration of the Lamb, Ghent Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[93] Florence.
|
||
|
||
[94] Ruskin, _Modern Painters_.
|
||
|
||
[95] Town Museum, Frankfort-on-the-Maine.
|
||
|
||
[96] The Song of Solomon ii. 2.
|
||
|
||
[97] Museum, Verona.
|
||
|
||
[98] _Rat. Off._, iii. 18.
|
||
|
||
[99] _Trésor_ of Aix la Chapelle.
|
||
|
||
[100] Arthur Martin, _Mélanges d’Archéologie_.
|
||
|
||
[101] Opera del Duomo.
|
||
|
||
[102] Isaiah xi. 1–2.
|
||
|
||
[103] _Christian Iconography_, Didron.
|
||
|
||
[104] Ghent Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[105] Uffizi Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[106] _Christian Iconography_, Didron.
|
||
|
||
[107] Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[108] Uffizi Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[109] St Petersburg.
|
||
|
||
[110] Tiefenbronn Church.
|
||
|
||
[111] Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
|
||
|
||
[112] Sophocles, _Œdipus Coloneus_.
|
||
|
||
[113] Smith’s _Classical Dictionary_.
|
||
|
||
[114] _De Baptismo_, c. viii.
|
||
|
||
[115] See title-page.
|
||
|
||
[116] Northcote and Brownlow, _Roma Sotterana_.
|
||
|
||
[117] Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[118] Taddeo di Bartolo, Sano di Pietro, Francesco di Giorgio Martini,
|
||
Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[119] No. 160, Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[120] Stefano di Giovanni, Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[121] _Trésor_ of Aix la Chapelle.
|
||
|
||
[122] _Trésor_ of the King of Bavaria.
|
||
|
||
[123] Milton.
|
||
|
||
[124] ‘The Nativity,’ National Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[125] ‘The Nativity,’ Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[126] Collection L. Mond, London.
|
||
|
||
[127] Durandus, _Rat. Off._, vi. 47–9.
|
||
|
||
[128] Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 14.
|
||
|
||
[129] _Lives of the Painters._
|
||
|
||
[130] Corsini Gallery, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[131] Monza.
|
||
|
||
[132] Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[133] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[134] Munich.
|
||
|
||
[135] Private apartments, Pitti Palace.
|
||
|
||
[136] Nierenberg.
|
||
|
||
[137] Mantegna, Belle Arti, Verona.
|
||
|
||
[138] Botticelli, Poldi Pezzoli Collection, Milan.
|
||
|
||
[139] Botticelli, Borghese Gallery, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[140] Museo Provincial, Seville.
|
||
|
||
[141] Collection of the Duchess of Fife.
|
||
|
||
[142] Royal Gallery, Augsburg.
|
||
|
||
[143] Sassoferrato, Church of S. Sabina, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[144] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[145] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[146] _Der Goldene Schmiede._
|
||
|
||
[147] Munich.
|
||
|
||
[148] 1 Maccabees xiii. 51.
|
||
|
||
[149] Revelation vii.
|
||
|
||
[150] 2 Esdras ii. 45.
|
||
|
||
[151] Chaucer, _The Second Nonnes Tale_.
|
||
|
||
[152] A. Venturi, _Storia dell’ Arte Italiana_.
|
||
|
||
[153] _Ibid._
|
||
|
||
[154] _Rat. Off._
|
||
|
||
[155] S. Cecilia, Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[156] Accademia, Venice.
|
||
|
||
[157] Dante.
|
||
|
||
[158] Rubens, Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[159] Piero della Francesca, Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[160] At Heidelberg.
|
||
|
||
[161] SS. Annunziata.
|
||
|
||
[162] Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[163] Lord Lindsay.
|
||
|
||
[164] Opera del Duomo, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[165] Sterzing, Rathaus.
|
||
|
||
[166] Opera del Duomo, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[167] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[168] W. Menzel, _Christliche Symbolik_.
|
||
|
||
[169] _Die Sinnbilder und Beiworte Mariens in der deutschen Literatur
|
||
und lateinischen Hymnenpoesie des Mittelalters._
|
||
|
||
[170] Rome.
|
||
|
||
[171] _Ibid._
|
||
|
||
[172] _Recherches sur l’origine du Blazon et en particulier la
|
||
Fleur-de-Lis._
|
||
|
||
[173] Ragalium Franciæ, Libro duo, 1545.
|
||
|
||
[174] In possession of Sir J. Tobin.
|
||
|
||
[175] S. Chiara, Naples.
|
||
|
||
[176] Westminster Abbey.
|
||
|
||
[177] Psalterium cum Figuris, Bib. National.
|
||
|
||
[178] Roman des Trois Pélerinages, Bib. S. Geneviève.
|
||
|
||
[179] St Martin in Vignes, Troyes.
|
||
|
||
[180] Germanisches Museum, Nuremburg.
|
||
|
||
[181] Scenes from the Passion, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[182] Edmund G. Gardner, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[183] Louvre.
|
||
|
||
[184] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[185] First part of _King Henry VI_, Act I. sc. ii.
|
||
|
||
[186] Trial of Jeanne d’Arc, 1431.
|
||
|
||
[187] Florence.
|
||
|
||
[188] Rome.
|
||
|
||
[189] At Gaeta.
|
||
|
||
[190] British Museum.
|
||
|
||
[191] South Kensington Museum.
|
||
|
||
[192] Imperial Gallery, St Petersburg.
|
||
|
||
[193] Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[194] Collection Mérode, Brussels.
|
||
|
||
[195] _Spanish Handbook_, first edition.
|
||
|
||
[196] Lower Church, Assisi.
|
||
|
||
[197] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[198] Pantheon, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[199] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[200] Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[201] SS. Annunziata, Arezzo.
|
||
|
||
[202] Museo di S. Marco, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[203] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[204] Vatican, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[205] Cathedral, S. Giminiano.
|
||
|
||
[206] National Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[207] Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[208] _Lives of the Painters_, Titian.
|
||
|
||
[209] Diptych of Jeanne de Bourbon, Musée Condé, Chantilly.
|
||
|
||
[210] Collection of Prince U. Radziwill, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[211] Royal Gallery, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[212] British Museum.
|
||
|
||
[213] British Museum.
|
||
|
||
[214] W. Menzel, _Christliche Symbolik_.
|
||
|
||
[215] _Dies in lætitiæ_, Neale’s translation.
|
||
|
||
[216] The large transparent vase which stands beside the Madonna with
|
||
the Child, by Jean Perréal, in the Louvre, contains iris, the white
|
||
lily, lily of the valley and columbine.
|
||
|
||
[217] Duccio di Buoninsegna, National Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[218] Giovanni di Paolo, Vatican.
|
||
|
||
[219] Andrea Vanni, Collection Saracini, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[220] Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[221] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[222] Sacchetti.
|
||
|
||
[223] Museum of Padua.
|
||
|
||
[224] Vatican.
|
||
|
||
[225] Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[226] The Cathedral, Arezzo.
|
||
|
||
[227] Sermon on Ezekiel.
|
||
|
||
[228] Sermon on Amos and Zachariah.
|
||
|
||
[229] Tate Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[230] In the collection of Miss Hertz, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[231] Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[232] Milton.
|
||
|
||
[233] Botticini, Accademia; School of Botticelli, Accademia.
|
||
|
||
[234] Carotto, S. Eufemia, Verona.
|
||
|
||
[235] Alte Pinakothek.
|
||
|
||
[236] Rossello di Jacopo Franchi, Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[237] Luca Signorelli.
|
||
|
||
[238] Rathaus, Sterzing.
|
||
|
||
[239] Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[240] Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[241] Frankfort-on-Maine.
|
||
|
||
[242] S. Spirito, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[243] Yrjö Hirn, _The Sacred Shrine_.
|
||
|
||
[244] Wallraf Richartz Museum, Cologne.
|
||
|
||
[245] Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[246] _Goldene Schmiede._
|
||
|
||
[247] Huysman, _La Cathédrale_.
|
||
|
||
[248] Collection of Lady Jekyll.
|
||
|
||
[249] Tate Gallery, London.
|
||
|
||
[250] Lower Church, Assisi.
|
||
|
||
[251] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[252] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[253] _Goldene Schmiede._
|
||
|
||
[254] _Die Sinnbilder und Beiworte Mariens in der deutschen Literatur
|
||
und lateinischen Hymnenpoesie des Mittelalters._
|
||
|
||
[255] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[256] _Spiritual Grace._
|
||
|
||
[257] Pinacoteca, Arezzo.
|
||
|
||
[258] _Lives of the Painters_, Signorelli.
|
||
|
||
[259] Cathedral, Perugia.
|
||
|
||
[260] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[261] Collection Pierpont Morgan, America.
|
||
|
||
[262] Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[263] Cologne.
|
||
|
||
[264] Cologne.
|
||
|
||
[265] W. Menzel, _Christliche Symbolik_.
|
||
|
||
[266] Oratory of S. Bernardino, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[267] Vatican.
|
||
|
||
[268] National Gallery (now attributed to Botticini).
|
||
|
||
[269] Vatican.
|
||
|
||
[270] Vatican.
|
||
|
||
[271] Cathedral, Bagno di Romagna.
|
||
|
||
[272] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[273] Robert Browning.
|
||
|
||
[274] Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[275] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[276] Now in the Pinacoteca, Lucca.
|
||
|
||
[277] Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 17, 18, 20.
|
||
|
||
[278] _Cant. Cantic._ iv. 13.
|
||
|
||
[279] In Collection of the Duke of Devonshire.
|
||
|
||
[280] Cremona.
|
||
|
||
[281] Museum, Verona.
|
||
|
||
[282] A Sienese painter of the Franciscan Legend.
|
||
|
||
[283] Upper Church, Assisi.
|
||
|
||
[284] Capella dell’ Arena, Padua.
|
||
|
||
[285] Capella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[286] S. Girolamo Spello.
|
||
|
||
[287] Cathedral, Como.
|
||
|
||
[288] Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[289] Rijks Museum, Amsterdam.
|
||
|
||
[290] _Archæologia_, vol. 45.
|
||
|
||
[291] Villa Masèr, near Treviso.
|
||
|
||
[292] S. Domenico, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[293] The name Catharine, it will be remembered, is from the Greek
|
||
_Katharos_, which has the same signification as the lily, _i.e._,
|
||
purity.
|
||
|
||
[294] Luini, S. Maurizio, Milan.
|
||
|
||
[295] S. Francesco, Assisi.
|
||
|
||
[296] Royal Gallery, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[297] National Gallery, London.
|
||
|
||
[298] Seville Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[299] Rome.
|
||
|
||
[300] Ghent Cathedral.
|
||
|
||
[301] Collection Gardener, Boston.
|
||
|
||
[302] Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[303] _Paradise Lost._
|
||
|
||
[304] Vatican.
|
||
|
||
[305] Brera, Milan.
|
||
|
||
[306] Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[307] Museum, Brussels.
|
||
|
||
[308] Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[309] Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[310] _Ibid._
|
||
|
||
[311] Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[312] _Goldene Schmiede._
|
||
|
||
[313] Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[314] _Lives of the Painters._
|
||
|
||
[315] Joos van Cleeve, Royal Gallery, Brussels; Wolf Trant, National
|
||
Museum, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[316] Florence.
|
||
|
||
[317] Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
|
||
|
||
[318] Museum, Rouen.
|
||
|
||
[319] Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[320] Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[321] The ‘Chigi’ Madonna, Collection Gardener, Boston.
|
||
|
||
[322] W. Menzel, _Christliche Symbolik_.
|
||
|
||
[323] Museum. Colmar.
|
||
|
||
[324] German Museum, Nüremburg.
|
||
|
||
[325] Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.
|
||
|
||
[326] Royal Gallery, Dresden.
|
||
|
||
[327] National Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[328] Museum, Berlin.
|
||
|
||
[329] Vatican Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[330] Capitoline Museum, Rome.
|
||
|
||
[331] National Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[332] “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s
|
||
belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the
|
||
heart of the earth” (Matt. xii. 40).
|
||
|
||
[333] Vatican Museum.
|
||
|
||
[334] Uffizi, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[335] Uffizi.
|
||
|
||
[336] Accademia, Florence.
|
||
|
||
[337] Pitti.
|
||
|
||
[338] Florence.
|
||
|
||
[339] German Museum, Nüremburg.
|
||
|
||
[340] Vatican Gallery.
|
||
|
||
[341] _Ibid._
|
||
|
||
[342] Dr Anselm Salzer, O.S.B. _Die Sinnbilder und Beiworte Mariens in
|
||
der deutschen Literatur und lateinischen Hymnenpoesie des Mittelalters_.
|
||
|
||
[343] Mrs Henry Jenner, _Christian Symbolism_.
|
||
|
||
[344] Vatican.
|
||
|
||
[345] Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[346] Town Museum, Solothurn.
|
||
|
||
[347] Belle Arti, Siena.
|
||
|
||
[348] Accademia, Venice.
|
||
|
||
[349] Brera, Milan.
|
||
|
||
[350] National Gallery, London.
|
||
|
||
[351] Sermon on the Assumption of the Virgin.
|
||
|
||
[352] Isaiah iv. 2.
|
||
|
||
[353] Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
|
||
|
||
[354] Town Museum, Bruges.
|
||
|
||
[355] Dom di Bartolo d’Asciano.
|
||
|
||
[356] II. Esdras II., 19.
|
||
|
||
[357] II. Esdras II., 18.
|
||
|
||
[358] Rat. Off. of Altars.
|
||
|
||
[359] Ad. Nat., 2, 3.
|
||
|
||
[360] Spiritual Grace.
|
||
|
||
[361] Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
|
||
|
||
[362] José Antolines, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
|
||
|
||
[363] Murillo, Prado, Madrid.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
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