A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

226. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN AND ANGELS.

School of Botticelli (1447-1510). See 1034.

This is a copy of a picture by Botticelli in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. In the background is a hedge of roses, Botticelli's favourite flower. "No man has ever yet drawn, and none is likely to draw for many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them" (Fors Clavigera, 1872, xii. 2). And he painted them, just as he painted his Madonnas, from life, and from everyday life—for even as late as forty years ago, Florence was "yet encircled by a wilderness of wild rose." It should be noticed, further, that there was a constant Biblical reference in the flowers which the painters consecrated to their Madonnas—especially the rose, the emblem of love and beauty. The background in Madonna pictures is frequently, as here, a piece of garden trellis: "a garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse" (Song of Solomon, iv. 12).