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.’