Filippo Lippi and Botticelli, had painted the Child with the
pomegranate, and it is not very clear whether they held to the Sienese
symbolism or sympathized with the Northern tradition. But it was
probably the fruit of Eden, for in all other points the Florentines had
broken with the Byzantine conventions, and the Child was for them no
longer the Royal Child, richly clothed and dignified in gesture, but
He was a little naked human baby, born into the world to repair, as
the second Adam, the old Adam’s fault. That He is the Saviour, rather
than the King, is particularly emphasized by Botticelli, who seldom
fails, even though it be only by the foreboding in the grey eyes of the
angels, to give some hint of the coming tragedy.
On the other hand it may be possible that the painters of Florence
in the fifteenth century had harked back to another source for their
symbolism and had taken the imagery of Saint Gregory the Great, who
used the pomegranate as the emblem of the Christian Church ‘because
of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the same fruit.’ But
in later Italian art, as in all the Northern countries and in modern
Church symbolism, the fruit, most usually the apple, which is in the
hand of the Infant Christ, is the fruit of redemption, as the apple of
Adam was the fruit of damnation.
Following the same analogy, the Virgin is regarded as the second Eve,
the second universal mother, who, through her Son, is to repair the
fault of the first.
The symbolists of the thirteenth century found what they considered
proof of this in the word of Scripture.
Conrad von Würztburg writes:
‘Let a man take three letters:
When these straightforward are read,
The little word “Ave” stands out,
The new word of salutation (or healing).
Let him begin at the end,
And read to the beginning,
And “Eva” is found written.
* * * * *
That one may thereby know,
It is thou who fulfillest,
The old and the new Covenants.
The greeting from the angel’s mouth
Greeting thee, O royal spotless maid,
Hath told me this.’[312]
Therefore the apple, which masters of the Flemish and early German
schools sometimes introduced into Annunciations, laying it, for
instance, upon the window-sill, is the apple of redemption.
The apple in the hand of Eve is always the apple of damnation. There is
a curious drawing by Martin Schöngauer of the ‘Descent into Hell.’ Adam
and Eve come forth first of the released souls, Eve holding the apple,
which has the marks of her teeth still upon it.
In the hand of Mary it is again the apple of redemption, but it is the
fruit of the Fall when it is between the jaws of the serpent or dragon,
which she, at her Assumption, treads under foot.
[Illustration:
_Martin Schöngauer_
ADAM AND EVE DELIVERED FROM HELL
(Print Room, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]
In Italian art the apple is less often found in the Madonna pictures,
but the ancient analogy was not forgotten. On the predella of Lorenzo
di Credi’s ‘Annunciation’[313] there are three exquisite little scenes
from the life of Eve, and Vasari introduces the Tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil into his ‘Conception of the Virgin,’ painted in 1540.
Vasari describes it himself:
‘The Tree of the Original Sin was represented in the centre of the
painting, and at the roots thereof were placed nude figures of Adam and
Eve bound, as being the first transgressors of God’s commands. To the
principal branches there were also bound Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses,
Aaron, Joshua, David and the rest of the kings, law-givers, etc.,
according to their seniority, all fastened by both arms, excepting
only Samuel and Saint John the Baptist, who are bound by one arm only,
to intimate that they were sanctified before their birth. At the trunk
of the tree, and with the lower part turning around it, is the Old
Serpent, but the upper part of the form has the shape of Man, and the
hands are confined behind the back; on his head is one foot of the
glorious Virgin, which is trampling down the horns of the demon, while
the other foot is fixed on a moon. Our Lady is clothed with the sun
and crowned with twelve stars, being sustained in the air within a
splendour of numerous angels, nude, and illuminated by the rays which
proceed from the Madonna herself. These same rays, moreover, passing
amidst the foliage of the tree, give light to the figures bound to the
branches; nay, they seem to be gradually loosening their bonds, by the
power and grace which they derive from her out of whom they proceed. In
Heaven, meanwhile, that is, at the highest point of the picture, are
two children bearing a scroll, on which are the following words:
‘“_Quos Eva culpa damnavit, Mariæ gratia solvit._”’[314]
It was thus that Vasari united in one picture the two universal
mothers, the physical and the spiritual, and his allegory was typical
of the mysticism of his day, for he tells us that, being doubtful as
to the due treatment of the subject, he and his patron, Messer Bindo,
‘took counsel with such of our common friends as were men of letters,’
and Vasari’s friends included the fine flower of Italian intellect.
The picture, which is a good deal darkened by time, and less
interesting than the description leads one to expect, is still in its
original place in the Church of SS. Apostoli in Florence.
In some pictures, particularly those showing the influence of Memling,
an attendant angel holds the apple, holding it ready till the time
shall come when the Infant Saviour, with growing consciousness of His
mission, holds forth His hand to take it.
But there are various ‘Holy Families’[315] of the early German school
in which Saint Anne sits holding the apple. It seems strange that she
should, but it is to be remembered that in German popular religion and
in German art Saint Anne holds an important place. Altars were often
dedicated to her, and the holy family might, in a manner, be called her
attribute. Frequently Saint Anne and the Virgin are depicted seated
on one seat, apparently with equal possessive rights over the Holy
Child, who stands between them. There is also that strange allegorical
conception usually styled ‘_Mutter Anna selb-dritt_,’ where Saint Anne
sits with the Infant Christ on one knee and the Child-Virgin on the
other. She was the Virgin’s nearest blood-relation, and if the Virgin
was without sin, it was Anne, born in sin but the Mother of His Mother,
who most nearly connected the incarnate Godhead with the erring human
race. It was perhaps fitting, therefore, that she, representing sinful
humanity, should offer to the Saviour the fruit of the Fall, which in
His hand would become the fruit of Redemption. At other times it is
Mary who holds the fruit, but offering it to the Saviour, who raises
His hand to take it. She, as the second Eve, places in His hand the
apple by which mankind is to be redeemed, not lost, since she, by
giving Him a human body, had made that redemption possible.
In the Corsini Gallery[316] there is a picture, attributed to Hugo
van der Goes, in which Mother and Child hold each a fruit. At first
sight it seems as if it were a presentment in one picture of Christ as
the second Adam, and Mary as the second Eve, with a doubling of the
symbolism of the apple which would be illogical. But the fruit held by
Mary is distinctly a pear, that held by Christ apparently an apple. The
artist has, therefore, discriminated between the apple of damnation and
the sweeter, mellower fruit, which may be the symbol of Redemption, for
the Holy Child seems to be in the act of exchanging one for the other.
This may possibly also explain the thought in the mind of the
French ivory-cutters of the fourteenth century, for they, too, not
infrequently, placed a small round fruit resembling an apple in the
hand of the Infant Christ and a larger pear-shaped fruit in that of His
mother, though they give little indication of any action of exchange.
Northern art, though realistic, was very placid, and, except in scenes
from the Passion, quite unmarked by the sometimes painful pathos of the
Italian and Spanish schools. In the Madonna pictures the only faint
reminder of the tragedy for which the Child was born into the world
is the rosy-cheeked apple in the tiny hand. The mother is satisfied
and untroubled, the Child smiling happily, and an apple is a natural,
pleasant thing to place within a baby’s hand. Rubens painted a
delightful ‘Holy Family beneath an Apple Tree’[317]--a little scene of
idyllic happiness; and scarcely noticeable is the pathetic suggestion
of the branch of apples which Zacharias holds towards the little Christ.
The shifting of theological and artistic standpoints at the Reformation
in no way disturbed the Northern love of Old Testament analogies or the
affection for this particular symbol, and in Germany one of its most
charming developments was the Christmas tree, the evergreen tree laden
with golden and silver apples, set up in every home to commemorate the
birth of Christ. It is the Tree of Eden, which Christ by His birth and
death transmuted into a tree of Paradise.
The apple is the most usual fruit in the hand of the Infant Christ, but
some Flemish painters of the early sixteenth century give Him grapes
instead. The grapes symbolize the divine blood by which souls lost
through Adam’s fall are redeemed. Gerard David[318] puts a cluster of
white grapes in the tiny hand; Lucas van Leyden[319] white grapes also
with leaves and tendrils; and in another picture Lucas van Leyden[320]
places the apple and the grapes together upon the broad ledge in the
foreground. In this last there is the same idea of exchange which is
found more clearly expressed in the picture by Mabuse at Berlin.
This substitution of the fruit of the vine for the apple of Eden seems
only to be found in the Netherlands. In a very beautiful picture by
Botticelli, the grapes held by the angel have a simpler meaning. They,
with the corn, are the direct emblems of the body and the blood of the
Saviour, and foretell the coming sacrifice of His death; the symbolism
is identical with that of the embroidered vine-leaves and wheat-ears of
so many modern altar frontals.[321]
Very often, as upon the façade of Orvieto Cathedral, the fig-tree
is taken as the Tree of Temptation, for, it might be argued, our
first parents would take to make themselves garments the leaves of
the tree nearest to their hand, the leaves of that same tree of
whose fruit they had just eaten. ‘It is possible that the erotic
significance which the fig had among the ancients was also considered
in this connection,’[322] and it is probably because of its classical
associations that the fig was never placed in the hand of the Infant
Saviour.
Except as the forbidden fruit the fig is not found in Italian or
Flemish ecclesiastical art, but in Germany there appears to have been
no prejudice against it. It is painted frequently in the Madonna
pictures. A small fig-tree overshadows the cot of the Infant Christ
in a picture by Matthias Grünewald;[323] Hans Burgkmair[324] paints
it with the rose, the iris, the columbine and other attributes of the
Virgin; Hans Holbein[325] the Younger sets his Saint Ursula against a
fig-tree; and it is the only growing thing introduced in his best-known
work, the beautiful Madonna of the Bürgomeister Meyer.[326]
These fig-trees, unlike the barren fig-tree of Scripture, always bear
fruit and appear to be the symbols of a holy life rich with the fruits
of the Spirit.
XXI
THE GOURD
In the works of Crivelli, who painted in the cities of the Marches
between 1468 and 1493, the apple repeatedly occurs with a gourd laid
close beside it. In the ‘Annunciation’[327] they are together upon
the foreground’s edge. In ‘The Infant Christ giving the Keys to Saint
Peter’[328] the apple lies on the ground and the gourd is suspended on
the right hand of the throne. In the triptych in the Brera they hang
forward prominently from the wreath above the Madonna’s head. They
are again suspended, singly, each side of the head of Saint Giacomo
della Marca[329] (sometimes taken to be Saint Bernadine), toning with
the colour scheme, which has all the subdued richness of old Cordova
leather; and exactly the same apple and gourd lie on a ledge before
the ‘Madonna with the Child’ by Francia,[330] and have the identical
position in an ‘Enthroned Madonna’ by Lorenzo da San Severino.[331]
As the grouping of these two fruits is so insistently repeated there is
reason to think that it was no chance arrangement. The painter seems
to attach some definite meaning to their juxtaposition, and since not
Crivelli only, but also Francia and Lorenzo da San Severino, place them
together, and well forward in the picture where the eye cannot miss
them, they are apparently recognized symbols, not the whim of a single
painter.
The apple is, probably, here as elsewhere, the fatal fruit of Eden, and
the gourd may represent the fruit which is to be the antidote, in the
same sense that the grape is occasionally used by painters of the early
Flemish school. In this case the gourd would represent the Resurrection
and be the revival of a very ancient symbol which has an interesting
history. Among the wall paintings of the Catacombs the story of
Jonah is very repeatedly found. He is taken as the type of the risen
Christ,[332] since Christ Himself, answering the Pharisees, made the
comparison. He is represented both as being cast up by the fish and, in
the ensuing incident of his history, reposing under the gourd on the
east side of the city of Nineveh. The first subject being certainly
grotesque, it became more usual to depict him beneath the booth covered
with long-shaped gourds, and his sleeping figure (usually with the
legs crossed) is found constantly both among the Catacomb paintings
and on fragments of the early Christian gilded glass. Above him there
is always the same pergola-like booth with the hanging gourds. One
small disk of gold-ornamented Catacomb glass[333] has upon it the usual
gourd, but below, in place of Jonah, there is a large fish (Ichthys),
an emblem of Christ dating from the second century. Thus the type of
Christ has been replaced by His emblem, but the gourd, by association
symbol of His Resurrection, remains.
Therefore in these pictures by Crivelli the apple would be the symbol
of our death by the act of Adam, and the gourd of our Resurrection by
the act of the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
In a picture of the Fall, painted in 1570 by Floris Francesco of
Antwerp,[334] Adam sits upon the ground while Eve offers him an apple
from the tree. On the earth beside Adam lies a very large gourd. This
gourd may only exemplify the fruitfulness of Eden, or it may be another
example of the antithetical use of this symbol.
XXII
THE POMEGRANATE
Neri di Bicci,[335] Fra Angelico,[336] Filippo Lippi[337] and other
artists of the fifteenth century painted the Infant Saviour with a
pomegranate in His hand.
On the wall of the Bargello,[338] in the Chapel of the Podestà, is
a frescoed Paradise, which contains a figure long believed to be
a portrait of Dante by Giotto. He is seen in profile, wearing the
characteristic hood, and holds in his hand a small branch on which
are two ripe pomegranates. The fresco is not now considered to be by
Giotto, nor the portrait contemporaneous, but that would not materially
affect the meaning of the pomegranates, if they be a symbol, since the
painting dates from the last half of the fourteenth century.
Were it not for Dante’s pomegranate there would be no particular
reason to think that the artists of the ‘Quattrocento’ meant more than
simply to indicate some heavenly fruit when they placed the pomegranate
in the hand of the Child Christ. In accordance with the Byzantine
tradition to which Siena held, they regarded Him as the Royal Child
come to earth with Heavenly gifts in His hand; they had not yet adopted
the symbolism of the North, which saw in the Infant Christ the second
Adam, holding the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
though indeed Botticelli, who almost always gives some indication of
coming sorrow in Christ’s childhood, seems to have found some sad inner
meaning in the symbol.
But in Dante’s hand the fruit could not be the fruit of Paradise, and
it may therefore have some further meaning even when held by the Infant
Saviour.
[Illustration:
_Botticelli_ _Photo Brogi_
THE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS WITH LILIES AND
ROSE-GARLANDS
(Uffizi Gallery, Florence)]
Walter Pater writes: ‘The mystical fruit, which because of the
multitude of its seeds was to the Romans a symbol of fecundity ... to
the middle age became a symbol of the fruitful earth itself; and then
of that other seed sown in the dark underworld; and at last of the
whole hidden region, which Dante visited.... Botticelli putting it
into the childish hands of Him, who, if men went down into hell, is
there also.’
So, as the symbol of the life on the other side of death, the
pomegranate is exceedingly well placed when given to the writer of the
_Divina Commedia_, and it is even more appropriate in the hand of the
incarnate Godhead--He who holds our future destinies in the hollow of
His palm.
But it is difficult to ascertain if this was really the thought in the
minds of the Florentine artists.
Mrs Jameson considers the pomegranate to be the symbol of immortality,
or, showing the seeds, of hope in eternity.
But it would scarcely be the symbol of immortality in the Infant
Saviour’s hand, since the symbol so placed is never His exclusive
attribute, but the indication of some relationship with humanity. But
showing the seeds--and the seeds are usually shown--it might be the
symbol of a hope in eternity which He gives to man, the parallel lying
in the unexpected sweetness of the fruit within the hard rind.
But possibly the authority followed by the masters of the
‘Quattrocento,’ or by those churchmen who gave them their commissions,
was Gregory the Great, for he says: ‘The pomegranate is the emblem of
congregations because of its many seeds: also emblem of the Christian
Church because of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the
same fruit.
Following this interpretation, the pomegranate, when carried by Dante
or any other being of mortal birth, would indicate his faith in the
Holy Catholic Church.
In Northern art the pomegranate is very rare. The Flemish artists
ignore it, and those few German artists who paint it are those who
had come under Italian influence. And it does not seem entirely clear
whether those German artists who, like Hans Burgkmair,[339] paint it
in the Infant Christ’s hand, give to the Southern fruit the Southern
significance, or if for them it becomes the fruit of Eden in the hand
of the second Adam.
In scenes representing different events in the life of Christ, trees
of pomegranates are occasionally introduced. Giovanni di Paolo sets
the ‘Nativity’[340] in an orchard of pomegranates, and in a Florentine
picture of the fourteenth century[341] the newly-risen Christ is
surrounded by palms, pomegranates and flowers. These pomegranates,
however, do not seem to be used attributively but merely to give some
slight geographical indication. Bethlehem was an Eastern city; the tomb
of Christ was in an Eastern garden.
The pomegranate is also, theoretically, the emblem of the Virgin. ‘In
the symbolism of the cult of Mary, the ripe pomegranate, because of
its pleasant fragrance and its numerous seeds, represents her beauty
and many virtues, but the gradually-developing fruit refers to her
life.’[342]
‘The pomegranate with its crowned top is her as queen, and typifies
also hope and fruitfulness, the “Virginitas fecunda” of the octave of
Christmas.’[343]
Jeremy Taylor, in a beautiful passage, describes Mary as the
pomegranate tree and Christ as the fruit.
‘When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the nations
was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the
world, she brought forth the _Holy Jesus_, who, like light through a
transparent glass, past through, or a ripe pomegranate from a fruitful
tree, fell to the earth, without doing violence to its nurse and
parent.’
In art, however, the pomegranate is very seldom used as the attribute
of the Virgin. Occasionally the Florentine masters ornament the
Virgin’s throne with knobs which more or less resemble the fruit, and
Flemish artists, Memling in particular, place behind her a brocaded
panel of the well-known pomegranate design. But these pomegranate knobs
were a very usual detail in carved work, and the pomegranate pattern,
which still persists, was a standard design of the silk-weavers of
France and Italy.
The fruit itself is not used by the older masters. Even Crivelli, who
lavishes fruit of almost every sort upon his slender, long-figured
Madonnas, leaves the pomegranate aside.
In modern work, Podesti, in his vast fresco of the Immaculate
Conception,[344] has placed a large single pomegranate upon a book
arranged prominently in the foreground. It is the symbol, apparently,
of the fruitfulness of the Virgin.
The ancient Jews ornamented their temple with the pomegranate, and
their high priest’s robes were bordered with alternate bells and
pomegranates. In the Christian Church, too, they have been admitted
as decoration, though not with any very clear and definite symbolical
significance. There is a very handsome seventeenth-century altar-rail
of marble on which rest candlesticks and huge brass pomegranates before
the high altar in the ancient church of S. Cecilia in Rome; and a great
bronze pomegranate, worn by much caressing, is on the balustrade in the
tiny chapel which was once the bathroom of the saint.
XXIII
THE STRAWBERRY
The strawberry stands apart from all other symbolical fruits. It is
found in Italian, Flemish and German art, and also in the English
miniatures. There is a finely-executed Spanish miniature of the
sixteenth century in South Kensington Museum. The Pelican in her
Piety is in the centre and the border is formed of roses alternating
with strawberries. As a symbol it is not only widespread, but of
comparatively early origin. In Siena it appears as a flower of Heaven,
growing with lilies, violets and carnations, in the ‘Paradise’ of
Giovanni di Paolo painted in 1445;[345] and, almost at the same time,
a master of the Upper Rhine painted the well-known ‘Madonna of the
Strawberries,’[346] which represents the Virgin sitting upon the edge
of a raised bed filled with exquisitely-rendered strawberries. Behind
is a hedge of roses, and at her feet violets and lilies of the valley.
In the foreground is a small figure of the donor kneeling among tufts
of snowdrops. The snowdrop is rare as a symbol (though by no means
misplaced in a Madonna picture, having all the qualities, except the
perfume, of the lily of the valley), and it was probably the individual
fancy of the donor.
The strawberry is not mentioned in Scripture, neither does it seem
to have been remarked by those Fathers of the Church who concerned
themselves with symbolism, but it was very successful in its appeal
to the artists of the Renaissance. It is a very perfect fruit, with
neither thorns nor stone, but sweet, soft and delicious through and
through. Its flowers are of the whiteness of innocence and its leaves
almost of the sacred trefoil form, and since it grows upon the ground,
not on a tree, there is no possibility of its being the dread fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge.
Its meaning always appears to be the same; it is the symbol of perfect
righteousness, or the emblem of the righteous man whose fruits are
good works.
As the symbol of perfect righteousness, in Italy it is chiefly used in
‘Adorations,’ where the Infant Christ is laid upon the ground among the
grass. Botticelli seems to have been the first to have placed it among
the violets and daisies, but he had many followers, and a very charming
picture, with the little scarlet berries in the foreground, is the
‘Adoration’ by Perugino, now in Munich. Botticelli may, however, have
borrowed the symbol from Giovanni di Paolo,[347] who painted a small
minutely-finished picture of the Virgin, seated on a cushion, with
the Holy Child in her arms. Behind are fruit trees and strawberries,
violets and carnations are at her feet, and since it was usual in
Siena, in pictures where the Infant Saviour appears, to refer all
symbols to Him, they are His attributes. In German art of the fifteenth
century, on the other hand, the symbolical plants, including the
strawberry, which appears in the mystical ‘Enclosed Gardens,’ express
the virtues of Mary.