it was usual in Italy to place the stalk of lilies, a complete symbol
in itself of virginity, in the angel’s hand, and there was no need to
double the symbolism; but the painters of the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, in pictures of Mary with the Child or in a Holy
Family, use the crystal vase frequently as an attribute of the Infant
Saviour, filling it with those flowers which express His virtues, the
violet of humility, the rose or carnation of divine love, the daisy of
innocence, or the jasmine of heavenly hope.[216]
The actual number of blooms upon the lily stalk has also its
significance. Some think they should be three in number, two fully
opened flowers and one in bud, forming what Rossetti terms the
‘Tripoint.’
‘I’ the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each
Except the second of its points, to teach
That Christ is not yet born.’
Several of the masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
painted the two flowers with the bud or three fully-opened blooms, but
more often, arguing possibly that this lily was the emblem of God the
Son when made Man, and not of the Holy Trinity, they painted simply
a natural lily plant with clustering buds and one or many blossoms,
taking the whole plant as the symbol.
Sometimes the vase holds three distinct stalks of lilies with a single
bloom on each, an arrangement which was suggested, it is said, by the
Dominican legend of the doubting Master.
A Master of the Dominicans, unable to believe in the stainlessness of
the Blessed Virgin, went to ask help of the saintly brother Egidius.
‘O Master of the Preachers,’ said Egidius, on meeting him, ‘Virgo ante
partum.’ He struck the ground with his staff and from the spot there
immediately sprang a lily. ‘O doubting Master,’ he said again, ‘Virgo
in partu.’ He struck the earth and again a lily sprang. He spoke a
third time, ‘O my brother, Virgo post partum,’ a third lily bloomed,
and the Master of the Dominicans doubted no more.
A detached vase holding three lily blooms occurs frequently as the
motive of an architectural decoration executed in low relief, one
beautiful example being above the door of the Badia Church of Florence.
But it is not confined to buildings of Dominican origin, and the
arrangement seems to owe its popularity more to its symmetry than to
any supporting legend. In pictures, where greater freedom of treatment
is desirable, the lilies are one, two, three or more--there is no rule.
XV
THE LILY OF THE ANGEL GABRIEL
In the majority of the Annunciations which were painted during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the archangel Gabriel carries a
lily. In the earliest representations of the subject he has simply
a herald’s wand, which in later Byzantine art usually terminated in
a fleur-de-lys, the ancient symbol of royalty, or in a more or less
elaborate cross. More rarely he carries a scroll on which are inscribed
the words of his message.
In the early Sienese school he still holds the herald’s wand,[217] or
brings to the Virgin a branch of olive,[218] the symbol of peace and
goodwill. Once at least he holds a branch of laurel,[219] the meed of
those who excel, and sometimes the palm[220] of victory over sin.
In the famous Annunciation of Simone Martini,[221] Gabriel, who carries
a branch of olive, is also olive-crowned, and this seems to be the
proper symbolism of the subject. The messenger of God, crowned with
peace, brings the olive branch of reconciliation between God and man
to the Virgin, beside whom stands a vase filled with the lilies which
symbolize her purity. The dove hovers above.
It has not been decided which artist was the first to place the
stalk of lilies in the angel Gabriel’s hand, and first had come the
lovely symbol of the vase of lilies by the Virgin’s side. But in the
Annunciation, which forms part of Simone Martini’s polyptych in the
Museum of Antwerp, we find the herald’s wand just turning to a lily.
Professor A. Venturi, in his magnificent _History of Italian Art_,
describes it. The angel ‘holds a lily with a long stem, which is all
white. Thus the stick or sceptre of ivory, which we have already
seen in Duccio’s picture, has become partly stick, partly lily-stem.
With Duccio it is still the sceptre with three points, that Gabriel,
messenger of God, holds as sign of authority. But look how the three
points change themselves to lily-buds, and open the corolla, as the
archangel extends the candid flower towards the Virgin, who was saluted
by David and the Fathers as “The lily of the valleys.” The poetry of
Christian art thus overthrows mediæval materialism and lavishes flowers
on fair likenesses of Mary.’
In this Annunciation we find the three types of lilies used in art--the
lily growing freely and naturally in a vase beside the Virgin; the
stiff lily, half conventionalized in the angel’s hand; and the
fleurs-de-lys, wholly conventional, which ornament the arms of the
Virgin’s seat.
Simone Martini died in 1344, and by 1359, the date of its completion,
every Florentine artist must have seen the wonderful tabernacle raised
by Orcagna in Or San Michele, and every artist in Italy must have heard
descriptions of the shrine.
‘Che passa di bellezza, s’io ben recolo,
Tutti gli altri che son dentro del secolo.’[222]
On a panel of the Tabernacle there is an Annunciation which was the
most beautiful representation of the subject so far given to the
world, and the kneeling angel with the sweeping wings carries in his
left hand a heavy stalk of _lilium candidum_.
It is interesting to trace the evolution of the straight smooth
stick which the angel held in the earliest representations of the
Annunciation into the natural branch of lilies carried by the typical
Announcing Angel of Christian art. First we find upon the wand the
three-pointed fleur-de-lys, which from the days of the Assyrians
had ornamented the royal sceptre. The heavenly herald bore a wand
ornamented with the royal symbol when he brought a message from the
Lord of the Universe to the Maiden of the House of David, who was to be
the Mother of His Son. Gradually the fleur-de-lys gained some likeness
to the natural lily. The sceptre was made of ivory. It was white. Two
leaves appeared wreathing the stick. Midway in the transformation are
the lilies carried by the lovely choir of seated angels in a picture
by Guariento.[223] Each angel holds in his left hand an orb and in
the right a straight lily stem with leaves growing naturally up its
whole length. At the top is a single flower, which, seen in profile,
has the shape of the fleur-de-lys. Simone Martini indicates the
blossom’s cup-like form. With Orcagna we find the fully-realized stem
of lilies. One unidentified master of the fourteenth century[224] went
even further in botanical fidelity, and paints the bulb and pendent
rootlets, though, strangely enough, he at the same time keeps to the
old convention and places a scroll in the hand of both Madonna and
angel.
Meanwhile, in 1344, Ambrogio di Lorenzetti had painted an
Annunciation[225] in which the angel, crowned with olive, holds
the palm branch with which the ancient Romans were accustomed to
salute a conqueror. The symbol of the palm was used also by Spinello
Aretino,[226] a pupil of Giotto, and was supported by Dante, who
describes the angel Gabriel as:
‘He that bore the palm
Down unto Mary, when the Son of God
Vouchsafed to clothe Him in terrestrial weeds.’
But it did not come into general use in this connection, and chiefly
for the reason that the palm became consecrated to representations
of the last scenes of the Virgin’s life. The _Legenda Aurea_,
when recounting how the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin her
approaching death, states: ‘He (Gabriel) gave her a branch of palm from
Paradise, which he commanded should be borne before her bier.’
The palm was, therefore, a necessary detail in this scene, and it was
probably to avoid confusion between these two separate appearances of
the angel to the Virgin that the palm has been reserved entirely for
the last Annunciation. The religious sentiment of the age forbade the
portrayal of any sign of decrepitude in the Virgin even at the hour of
her death, and except for the substitution of the palm for the lily
and the reversal of the usual places of the figures, the Virgin being
placed on the left and the angel on the right, it would be difficult
to distinguish the scene where the Virgin receives the news of her
approaching death, from that in which her approaching motherhood is
announced to her.
It became the general rule, then, for Gabriel, as the angel of the
Annunciation of the Saviour’s birth, to carry a lily. But the rule
was not invariable. The early Flemish artists, half painters, half
craftsmen, loved to depict the delicately-chiselled gold of jewelled
sceptres topped by an elaborate fleur-de-lys or the cross-surmounted
orb which signified the sovereignty of Christ upon earth. These
precious sceptres accorded well with the opulent and prosaic comfort
of the surroundings in which they set the sacred drama, and reflect
the spirit of the Northern mystics. The clear detailed visions of
Saint Matilda, the inspired nun of Saxony, which occurred during the
last half of the thirteenth century, and whose imagery has distinctly
influenced Northern religious art, fairly scintillate with mystical
gems. Even the roses and the lilies, symbols, she tells us, of divine
love and innocence, which she saw in her glimpses of Heaven, were
embroidered in gold and silver thread upon rich stuffs or cloth of gold.
Italian art had different traditions. It began with the utter
simplicity of Giotto and Fra Angelico, though the Byzantine love of
rich trappings still lingered in Siena. As Florentine art progressed
it did indeed become more elaborate, till its inclination to
magnificence was severely checked by Savonarola, whose influence on
art has usually been wrongly estimated. He was no blind iconoclast,
though without doubt objects of great artistic worth were burnt in his
famous holocaust of ‘vanities,’ which finished the Carnival of 1497.
On the contrary, as Senator Pasquale Villari points out, he was always
surrounded by the best artists of his century. Fra Bartolommeo, for
four years after his death, did not touch a brush, such was his grief.
The Della Robbias were devoted to him; two received the habit from
his hands. Lorenzo di Credi was his partisan; Cronaca ‘would speak
of nothing but the things of Savonarola.’ Botticelli illustrated his
works, and Michael Angelo was a most constant listener to his preaching.
He spoke plainly to the painters from his pulpit. The beauty of the
Divinity, of the Virgin and the Saints was the beauty of holiness, not
of outward adornment of fine raiment, gold and jewels, and ‘the beauty
of man or woman in so far as it approaches to the primal beauty, so is
it great and more perfect.’[227]
We read of the Virgin that by her great beauty the men who saw her were
astonished (stupefatti).
... ‘Do you believe that she went about in the manner in which you
paint her? I say to you that she went dressed as a poor woman!’[228]
But he who taught for choice beneath the damask rose in the centre
of his cloister admitted roses and lilies where he denounced rubies
and pearls. Flowers alone survived as emblems or as votive decoration
even after the puritanical current towards the ideal set in motion
by the great Dominican became merged in the over-sweeping wave of
classicism--and even those late artists who dispensed with every other
convention for the expression of the abstract, placed a lily in the
angel Gabriel’s hand.
Modern art has adopted the tradition and in the ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’
of Rossetti[229] the wingless angel carries a stalk of lilies. There
is also a white lily embroidered upon the strip of material which is
stretched upon an embroidery frame at the foot of Mary’s bed.
The angel brings the lily to the Virgin in recognition of her perfect
purity, the transcendent quality by which alone she found favour with
God. Through it tremendous honour came upon her, and by the marvellous
nature of that honour she was eternally bound to her virginity.
‘Mary Virgin, ever a Virgin.’ In a very charming picture by Filippo
Lippi,[230] Mary, with bent head, and fully understanding the grave
significance of the gift, reverently accepts the lily which the angel
Gabriel places in her hand.
In another Annunciation by Filippo Lippi,[231] a second angel, peeping
through the entry behind Gabriel, also carries a lily, but it is a
fancy which seems to have no particular significance and rather impairs
the dignity of the subject.
So constantly did painters and sculptors of the Annunciation place
a lily in the archangel Gabriel’s hand that it gradually became his
special attribute, which he wore, as a knight did his crest, to
distinguish him from other angels and archangels.
In the apocryphal Book of Tobit is the story of Tobias, who was
accompanied by the angel Raphael on the famous journey which he took
to recover his father’s money, a journey in which he not only caught
the fish whose gall was to cure his father’s blindness, but also found
a wife. It is the only subject from the Apocrypha which now decorates
Christian churches, and owes this grace to the force with which
the story, despite its fantastic details, illustrates the constant
watchfulness of Heaven over those still on their earthly pilgrimage.
In the fifteenth century it was a favourite subject for a votive
picture on behalf of one about to take a journey. The young man, rather
helpless in his youth and inexperience, protected by the strong, wise
guardian angel, was a group painted with the greatest pleasure, and
the fascination of ideal, sexless beauty, of curved, sweeping wings,
tempted to an amplification of the subject, and though the Book of
Tobit mentions one archangel only--
‘... The affable archangel
Raphael; the sociable spirit that deign’d
To travel with Tobias, and secured
His marriage with the seven-times wedded maid--’[232]
there suddenly sprang up in Florence a short-lived fashion for
depicting Tobias with three archangels.
There are two of these pictures in Florence;[233] others at
Verona,[234] Turin[235] and Munich.[236] In each Michael is armed,
Raphael grasps Tobias by the hand, and Gabriel carries a branch of
lilies.
But the four figures in a row make an awkward composition, and
stiffness is avoided at the expense of dignity. A mincing angel, too
conscious of his pretty wings and daintily-held lily, is the Gabriel of
the best known of these pictures, attributed of late years to Botticini.
[Illustration:
_Jörg Brue_
THE COLUMBINE OF THE SEVEN GIFTS
(Berlin)]
[Illustration:
_The Master of Flémalle_ _Photo Hanfstängl_
SAINT BARBARA WITH THE ROYAL LILY
(Prado)]
The lily is, of course, here used non-symbolically, merely to
distinguish one archangel from another, and for the same reason that
Michael is given the sword and frequently the scales for the weighing
of souls, Raphael the traveller’s staff and gourd, or, when with
Tobias, a small box. The angel Gabriel’s primary function is to be
the herald of God, as it is Michael’s to lead the hosts of Heaven,
and Raphael’s to guide the straying. Therefore Gabriel carries the
herald’s wand, now developed to a lily, Michael the sword, and Raphael
the staff.
Thus Gabriel, when in company with other archangels and angels,
carries the lily to establish his identity, but where, as in a
Coronation[237] or an Enthroned Madonna, he stands with Saint Michael
guarding the throne, he usually holds also a scroll with ‘AVE MARIA’
upon it, showing that the main function of the lily is to proclaim the
spotlessness of the Virgin.
A rather charming treatment of the Annunciation lily, which originated
in Germany, is to strew the lily heads upon the floor. They then have
the appearance of having fallen from Heaven in a shower, like those
falling roses, symbols of divine love, which were so often painted
by the artists of Italy and Spain. ‘The Master of the Sterzinger
Altar’[238] introduces seven of these lily blooms and buds, snapped
off short, and with only an inch or two of stalk, into his fine
Annunciation painted in 1458, and, satisfied with these, he uses lilies
neither in a vase nor in the angel’s hand. Other artists of his day
liked the fancy well, but wished to keep the mystic vase, so, to avoid
doubling the symbol, they turned the fallen flowers to roses, or roses
and carnations, symbols of the divine favour which had fallen upon the
maid. It was a graceful exposition of the underlying meaning of the
scene, symbolically right and delightful in pictorial effect.
XVI
THE FLOWERS OF THE DIVINITY
The only growing thing which is used to represent the Trinity in Unity
is the trefoil or shamrock. Saint Patrick is said to have plucked from
the ground a leaf of shamrock and by it illustrated to the heathen
Irish the mystery of the Triune Godhead. Architectural details, and
more especially windows, based upon the trefoil’s form, are common in
Gothic churches. In pictorial art it is rather unusual as an emblem,
but Michael Angelo, who so rarely used symbolical detail, paints the
triple-leaved plant and no other leaf or flower in the foreground of
his Holy Family.[239]
But though the trefoil is the only direct floral emblem of the Trinity,
distinct reference to it is often found in the triple grouping of
the flowers which are the attributes of the Saviour. For instance,
the three carnations of divine love in the crystal vase before the
Infant Christ in Hugo van der Goes’ ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’;[240]
the three lilies (one in bud) which the angel holds in Crivelli’s
‘Annunciation’;[241] and the three irises in the Annunciation of
Pesello.[242]
There is no plant or flower used as the emblem of God the Father. From
time to time the Hebrew metaphor of the Burning Bush has been used
pictorially to indicate His presence; but as early as the fifth century
this image was appropriated to express the purity of the Virgin Mother,
enveloped but not consumed by the divine love.
In the Catacombs and on many mediæval crucifixes the Person of God the
Father is indicated by a hand issuing from the clouds and holding a
wreath of laurel, palm or olive. But the wreath in this case is not the
attribute of the Divine Father, but the attribute of him above whose
head the wreath is held. In the Catacombs it is the martyr’s crown; on
the crucifix it is Christ’s crown of victory over sin.
As already mentioned, the lily of purity and the olive branch of peace
are occasionally used as the attributes of God the Holy Ghost. As His
direct emblem the dove only is employed, since Scripture states that
He descended in ‘the form of a dove.’ Sometimes in French manuscripts
of the fourteenth century He is represented in human form, but such
representations are seldom found elsewhere.
Poetry and art have enwreathed the entire life of Jesus Christ with
flowers.
‘The Annunciation was the festival of early spring. Christ, whose birth
was foretold by Gabriel, was a flower that blossomed from the stem
of Jesse; His Mother, to whom the imagery of the Song of Solomon was
applied, was a flower of the fields and a “lily of the valley.” And the
place where the Annunciation occurred had a name, Nazareth, which in
Hebrew, according to an old but incorrect interpretation, means flower.
Such a meeting of associations was naturally not left unutilized by
the theological authors. It was often set forth in sermons how the
promise of the birth of God as man was connected with the spring’s
promise of flowers and fruit. S. Bernard in particular worked out the
flower symbolism of the Annunciation in poetic and ingenious conceits.
The flower, he said, had been willing, at the time of flowering, to
be born of a flower in a flower--_i.e._, Jesus permitted Himself to
be announced to Mary at Nazareth in the spring: “Flos nasci voluit de
flore, in flore, et floris tempore.”’[243]
So we find a stem of lilies or a vase of flowers as the symbol of His
miraculous birth, and on the morning of His nativity rejoicing angels
carried olive branches as they sang of peace on earth and goodwill
towards men. A helpless Infant, He lay upon the ground to receive the
Adoration of His Mother and of angels, among roses of love and lilies
of purity, or in grass thick with the daisies, violets and strawberries
which told of His innocence, humility and righteousness.
As a boy, growing perhaps to a consciousness of His mission, in Spain
He is found with thorny roses, wounding Himself sometimes with the
thorns of grief and suffering springing from His divine love itself.
Early devotional art left Christ’s life with its miracles and parables
and passed to His Passion. For the entry into Jerusalem there is
the palm of victory and the olive branch of peace. In the Ecce Homo
He wears the Crown of Thorns, and the reed as a sceptre is placed in
His hand. For the Crucifixion Signorelli painted below the Cross many
pleasant flowers, among which are noticeable the violet and daisy.
But the Northern schools reserved for this scene the bitter herbs and
flowers, the willow, dandelion and thistle. These weeds, carefully
chosen and painted with marvellous minuteness, fill the foreground in
the Crucifixion by an unnamed German master in the National Gallery.
In the last scenes of all of the divine tragedy there is no symbol but
the Crown of Thorns, and to the Resurrection no flower is specially
dedicated. But in the Thomas Altar,[244] by the Master of the
Bartholomew Altar, the newly-risen Christ is shown, and round His feet,
upon the marble step, are lying blossoms of violets and daisies and
seven heads of the holy columbine.
The passion flower does not appear in art before the seventeenth
century. It was unknown in Europe before the Spanish conquest of South
America, and it is said that when the Jesuits brought home reports of
the miraculous flower bearing the insignia of the Passion, which grew
from tree to tree in the forests of the new land, their tale was first
received as a pious invention. But the plant itself at length arrived,
and early in the eighteenth century Francesco Trevisani painted a
delightful little picture[245] less noticed than it deserves to be.
The Virgin, who is very sweet and gentle, both in pose and expression,
sits sewing beside a table on which is a vase of roses and lilies. The
little Christ, who has apparently just run in from the garden, points
out to His Mother, with a most childlike gesture, the little thorny
crown upon the passion flower which He holds in His hand. The picture,
which is not unlike the work of Andrea del Sarto in miniature, is
wonderfully attractive.
XVII
THE FLOWERS OF THE VIRGIN
There were many flowers used by the early writers as similes of the
Virgin.
‘Thou art the myrtle and the blooming rose of Paradise,
Thou art the fairness of heaven, and
The feast-day of our hearts,’
wrote Saint Petrus Damiani in the eleventh century.
In Saint Bernard we read:
‘Mary is the violet of humility, the lily of chastity and the rose of
charity.’
Conrad von Würtzburg compares her to the balsam of purest perfume,
the fairest among flowers, the cedar of Lebanon, the cypress of Zion,
fennel and mint, the white lily, the early flowering almond, the
healing mandrake, the musk-flower, the evergreen myrtle, the low nard,
the thornless rose in the dew of heaven, the noble frankincense and
the hidden violet, and further addresses her as
‘A living Paradise
Of grandly coloured flowers.’[246]
But though poets, and particularly German poets, ranged widely through
the fields in their search for blossoms which by their beauty or by
their healing virtues were fit to symbolize the Virgin, the early
artists painted very few. In those mystical Enclosed Gardens which so
charmed the Germans of the fifteenth century, only a few plants appear.
The lily, which is often the lily of the valley, the rose, the violet,
and the strawberry, are the most usual. Later the iris, the royal lily,
was added, and sometimes the seven-blossomed columbine. Occasionally
in Italy the jasmine and the daisy are also found in the vase beside
her, but all other flowers of the garden and field, the tulip, anemone,
ranunculus, primrose, daffodil, dahlia, etc., were rigidly excluded.