Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_. Boldface
text is enclosed in =equals signs.= Small-caps text is shown in
all-caps.
[Illustration:
_Lorenzo da Sanseverino_ _Photo Hanfstängl_
THE VIRGIN IN A STRAWBERRY-DECORATED MANTLE
Below are the Gourd and Apple, symbols of Resurrection and Death
(National Gallery)
_Frontispiece_]
]
THE
FLORAL SYMBOLISM OF
THE GREAT MASTERS
BY
ELIZABETH HAIG
[Illustration]
LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68–74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
1913
[Illustration: _The Divine Heart (19th Century--German)_]
PREFACE
This little book has been written for the pleasure of those amateurs
who are more interested in the idea which inspires a picture than
in the picture’s workmanship. Naturally, the more accomplished the
artist, the more clearly and attractively is he able to set forth his
meaning; but with art criticism this book has nothing to do, and the
attributions are, for the most part, simply those of the official
catalogues of the respective galleries.
To explain completely even so small a branch of Christian symbolism as
that of flowers, an exhaustive knowledge is required of the development
of Christian theology, and of the varying force with which different
doctrines appealed at different times to the public mind. But still,
these notes may be of some interest to those who care to trace in the
work sanctioned by the Church and reverenced by the people the history
of Western idealism, and who are sometimes puzzled by the conventions
employed by the Masters to illustrate the Divine Mysteries.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS 9
II. THE FLOWER SYMBOLISTS 23
III. THE LILY 41
IV. THE IRIS 62
V. THE ROSE 71
VI. THE CARNATION 83
VII. GARLANDS OF ROSES 88
VIII. THE COLUMBINE 104
IX. THE OLIVE 112
X. THORNS 126
XI. THE PALM 134
XII. THE ACANTHUS 146
XIII. THE FLEUR-DE-LYS 148
XIV. THE LILY OF THE ANNUNCIATION 162
XV. THE LILY OF THE ANGEL GABRIEL 177
XVI. THE FLOWERS OF THE DIVINITY 191
XVII. THE FLOWERS OF THE VIRGIN 197
XVIII. THE LILY OF THE SAINTS 219
XIX. THE VINE 235
XX. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 240
XXI. THE GOURD 257
XXII. THE POMEGRANATE 261
XXIII. THE STRAWBERRY 268
XXIV. FRUIT IN GARLANDS 272
PARADISE. GIOVANNI DI PAOLO 277
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN. H. VAN EYCK 279
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. H. VAN DER GOES 281
LA PURISSIMA. MURILLO 283
THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY, VIRGIN. D. G. ROSSETTI 285
LIST OF AUTHORITIES 287
INDEX OF ARTISTS 289
INDEX OF FLOWERS 291
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE PAGE
I. THE VIRGIN IN A STRAWBERRY-DECORATED MANTLE (_Lorenzo
da San Severino_) _Frontispiece_
II. THE BADGE OF THE ORDER OF THE LILY OF NAVARRE 41
III. THE FLOWERS OF HEAVEN (_Mosaic of the 13th Century_) 41
IV. THE ‘ENCLOSED GARDEN’ OF THE VIRGIN (_Stefano da Zevio_) 100
V. GABRIEL, CROWNED WITH OLIVE, BRINGS THE MESSAGE OF
RECONCILIATION (_Martin Schöngauer_) 123
VI. THE CROWN OF THORNS (_Zurburan_) 128
VII. THE ACANTHUS OF PARADISE (_Mosaic of the 13th Century_) 146
VIII. THE ROSE OF DIVINE LOVE RISING FROM A PRECIOUS VESSEL
(_Pinturicchio_) 169
IX. THE ROYAL LILY SPRINGING FROM A HUMBLE VASE (_Pesello_) 169
X. THE COLUMBINE OF THE SEVEN GIFTS (_Jörg Breu_) 188
XI. SAINT BARBARA WITH THE ROYAL LILY (_The Master of
Flémalle_) 188
XII. THE FRUIT OF DAMNATION EXCHANGED FOR THE FRUIT OF
REDEMPTION (_Hugo van der Goes_) 245
XIII. THE FRUIT OF HEAVEN RELINQUISHED FOR THE APPLE OF
EDEN (_Memling_) 245
XIV. ADAM AND EVE DELIVERED FROM HELL (_Martin Schöngauer_) 248
XV. THE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS
WITH LILIES AND ROSE-GARLANDS (_Botticelli_) 262
XVI. PARADISE (_Giovanni di Paolo_) 278
XVII. THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN (_Hubert van Eyck_) 280
XVIII. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS (_Hugo van der Goes_) 282
XIX. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (_Murillo_) 284
XX. THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY, VIRGIN (_Dante Gabriel Rossetti_) 286
THE FLORAL SYMBOLISM OF THE GREAT MASTERS
I
EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS[1]
Since the earliest days of Christianity the Church has made use of
emblems. The Early Church used them partly protectively to conceal
their faith from the pagans, and partly because it lacked artists
capable of worthily depicting the Godhead in human form. Even when the
days of persecution had passed, the Church, restrained by reverential
tradition, by poverty perhaps, and perhaps by the Eastern fear of the
‘graven image,’ continued to represent Christ as the True Vine and the
Apostles as sheep or as doves.
But at the beginning of the fourth century the Emperor Constantine
established Christianity as the religion of the state. New, and often
magnificent, churches were built in each town and the Emperor placed in
the hands of the ecclesiastics a large portion of the royal revenues.
In these grand new basilicas the simple decoration of the Catacombs
and tiny ancient chapels was not sufficient. The ample walls offered
a splendid field for the mosaicist and Byzantine taste demanded
elaborate pictorial effects. Representations of the Redeemer appeared
surrounded by the Apostles, the prophets and the four-and-twenty
elders of Revelation. Saints and martyrs were introduced, and later
we find imperial personages, Justinian surrounded by his guards and
Theodora followed by the ladies of her court. It became necessary to
distinguish the figures one from another and therefore symbolism was
largely introduced. The Deity was placed within the _mandorla_, symbol
of perfect blessedness. The prophets were awarded broken wheels to
denote their imperfect revelation, and the apostles books, to signify
their fuller knowledge. Haloes were carefully differentiated. Virgin
saints carried palms or laurel crowns, and martyrs had the instruments
of their martyrdom placed beside them. Some figures carried scrolls
on which were inscribed texts which gave the clue to their identity,
others simply had their names written above their heads, but both these
latter devices were useless to the ignorant.
At the Renaissance, when art had a fuller life and wider aims, it
was not sufficient to thus merely label the persons represented. The
traditions of Byzantine art once broken, the painter was free to set
upon the panel all the beauty that his mind could conceive and that his
hand could execute. He had no longer to paint a Christ or a Madonna
correct to a formula, but none the less he was bound to depict figures
which should be instantly recognizable as God incarnate and the meek
Mother of Christ. So from his freedom sprang the problem which has
occupied the religious painter ever since, the painting of a soul’s
quality, the making visible to the world of the beauty of holiness.
During the great century of art, achievement came. Raphael, Leonardo,
Michael Angelo, Perugino required and used no symbol to express the
majesty of Christ or the purity of the Virgin Mother. They had that
power to make visible the intangible which, in art, is genius. But
among the earlier artists of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
he who was unable to show by the announcing angel’s attitude and
mien that his message was one of peace and goodwill, placed a branch
of olive in his hand, and he who despaired of adequately depicting
the immaculate purity of the Virgin, emphasized his point by setting
a pot of spotless lilies by her side. So was the intention of the
least-accomplished of artists made clear, even to the unlettered.
After the first effervescence of the Renaissance had died down, the
laws of sacred art became once more fixed, though never again (except
in Spain beneath the Inquisition) with the strictness of the Byzantine
school. Art as a teacher of religion required to be as conservative
as the Catholic Church with which it was allied, and the symbolism of
the fourteenth century has remained with few additions or modifications
to our own day. When devotional pictures multiplied, emblems passed
into what may be termed the heraldry of the Church. Though also used in
decoration, their primary use upon altar vessels and Church furniture
was to distinguish the object as sacred, or as the property of the
Church, in the same way as the royal arms or a private crest indicated
the ownership of secular things. They appeared on the banners used in
processions of the Church and on the badges and insignia of religious
orders, but were very seldom used in pictorial art. Indeed, it is in
the early Flemish school alone that pictures similar to the van Eycks’
‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’[2] or to their ‘Fountain of Life’[3] are
found, where angels, prophets, saints and patriarchs bow down before
the emblem, not the figure, of the Saviour.
During the first twelve centuries of Christianity the emblems and
symbols of the Church were drawn from many sources; those that were
introduced at the Renaissance were fruits and flowers. The Christ-Child
holds the apple, symbol of the Fall, or a pomegranate showing the
seeds, symbol of the Church. The lily typifies the spotless purity
of the Virgin. Saint Dorothea is crowned with roses; Saint Joseph
holds the flowering rod. There were, of course, other symbols used.
Allegorical figures held the sword of justice or the scales of
judgment; the mandorla, the halo, the orb of sovereignty and the
book of knowledge survived from the Byzantine school; but those
symbols which first appeared or came into fashion, as it were, at the
Renaissance were fruits and flowers.
It was not strange that it should be so. The new interest in the
literature of ancient Greece and Rome had revived the old classical
love of nature, of running brooks and leafy forests, and of all the
fresh unspoiled things which shoot up clean and fragrant from the
earth. Saint Francis with his ‘jesters of the Lord’ had gone singing
through the vineyards praising God for the light of the sun, for the
birds, for the grass. His song was taken up by the troubadours, who
also sang of the fair things of the fields, though their _leit motif_
was earthly, rather than heavenly, love.
The minnesingers of Germany sang of roses, spring-tide, love and
chivalry, and three of the sweetest-throated, Walther von der
Vogelweide, Godfried von Strassburg and Conrad von Würtzburg, each
before he died, composed a song in honour of the Virgin.
In Provence the Lady Clémence Isaure instituted the _Jeux Floraux_, and
for those who excelled in song there were three awards, a violet, an
eglantine and a marigold, all wrought in gold. Later a silver lily was
added as the prize for the best sonnet celebrating the perfections of
the Virgin. The rules of this Mayday tournament of song proclaimed that
‘these games are for the amusement of the people, for the honour of God
as the giver of good gifts of trees and flowers, and to praise Him,
because nature, which had been dead, now lives again.’
The world was now beginning to see the value of these ‘good gifts.’
Chaucer could find no higher emblem for the Virgin than a flower:
‘And thou that art the floure of Virgins all;’
while Dante, who, more than any other single writer, has influenced
sacred art, uses the same imagery:
‘Here is the Rose
Wherein the Word Divine was made incarnate,
And here the lilies, by whose order known
The way of life was followed.’
The Churchmen of the day caught the spirit of the Humanists, and there
sprang up a school of symbolists who concerned themselves largely with
plants, fruits and flowers. The writings of the early symbolists,
Origen, Saint Melitus, Bishop of Sardes, Saint Jerome, Saint Ambrose,
Walafrid Strabo and Raban Maur, Archbishop of Mayence, were re-studied
and their allusions to the plant world noted. Durandus, Bishop of
Mende, whose _Rationale_, published in 1295, is still considered the
supreme authority on the spiritual significance of Church architecture
and Church ornament, held flowers in general to be the emblems of
goodness. ‘They represent, like the trees, those good works which
have the virtues for roots.’ Growing things, he considered, could very
beautifully supplement the ritual of the Church, and he recommends that
‘on Palm Sunday the people should deck themselves with flowers, olive
branches and palms, the flowers to signify the virtues of the Holy
One, the olive branches His office as peace-bringer and the palms His
victory over Satan.’
There were those symbolists who, like Durandus of Mende and the
Cardinal Petrus of Capua, valued the symbol entirely as a means of
interpreting the doctrines of the Church. Their definition was that of
Hugues de Saint-Victor: ‘The symbol is the allegorical representation
of a Christian principle under a material form’; and they simply
searched for those objects which best suited their purpose. Then
there were those symbolists who, like Saint Hildegarde, Abbess of
Rupertsburg, mixed their symbolism strangely with herbalism and magic.
A plant of healing virtues was a good plant, attributed to the Virgin
or a saint, and typifying their virtues, and a harmful plant was evil,
beneath the patronage of the Devil, typifying and inducing envy,
hatred, or perhaps malice.
Lastly there were the mystic symbolists, and it is they who have had
most influence on pictorial art. There were those who, like Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux, could discern through the darkened glass of Old
Testament metaphor the divine facts of New Testament revelation, and
those who, like Saint Mectilda of Germany, were favoured by Heaven
with clear and detailed visions, in which Christ Himself deigned to
explain the complicated symbolism of His surroundings, His embroidered
robes and jewelled ornaments. And there were those mystics who were not
in holy orders, who did not claim direct communication with Heaven,
yet who have, nevertheless, by giving shape and colour to the vague
indications of Holy Writ as to the future state, and by materializing,
as it were, the illusive inner vision of things invisible, profoundly
influenced the religious sentiment, if not the theology, of the world.
Chief among them is the poet Dante, the friend of Giotto and the
spiritual father of both the poets and the artists of the Italian
Renaissance. In Germany his place was taken by Conrad von Würtzburg, a
poet of infinitely less genius but who equally influenced his native
art, at least as far as devotional representations of the Virgin Mary
were concerned. He was a minnesinger who consecrated the last effort of
a long life to praising the virtues of her whom he terms ‘The Empress
of Heaven.’ About the year 1286 he wrote ‘The Golden Forge,’ which he
describes as:
‘A golden song
Forged in the smithy of my heart
And beautifully inlaid
With the jewelled thoughts of my heart.’
It is an eulogy of the Virgin, close-packed with allegory, simile and
metaphor, which are borrowed for the greater part from the Fathers of
the Church, but some few are of his own finding.
His work was never to be compared with that of the great Italian, but
it very strongly influenced the hymnology and the pictorial expression
of the cult of the Virgin in both the Netherlands and Germany.
In England there was no great symbolist among the early poets.
They were plain tales of love and war that Chaucer told in ‘English
undefyled.’ But the Church in England produced some beautiful mystical
hymns, notably the one to the Virgin, written, perhaps, about 1350,
which begins:
‘Of a rose, a lovely rose,
Of a rose is al myn song.’
* * * * *
Religious pictures are of two types: the historical, which aims at
depicting a sacred scene exactly as it did occur; and the devotional,
which presents a divine or holy figure in the attitude and with the
surroundings best calculated to inflame the devotion of the worshipper.
To the first category belongs Rubens’ ‘Descent from the Cross.’[4] The
dead Figure, the sustained effort of the men who detach it from the
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.
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.
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.