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.’