It may be noticed that while the sacred flowers are not unfrequently introduced into profane scenes, the non-sacred flowers, for instance the daffodils and foxgloves of the hunting scenes on old Flemish tapestry, are never introduced as symbols, and rarely as details, in devotional subjects.
The same symbolism holds good within the whole Western Church, and those Reformed Churches which have rejected painted and carved images have preserved a good many of the older symbols in the details of church decoration. The most important symbols of Christianity, the Lamb, the Dove, the Cross, the Glory, the Halo, remain always unchanged. It is the lesser, and more especially the flower symbols, which vary in different countries and different schools of painting. Italy being the headquarters of the Church, and also the centre from which pictorial art spread over Europe, most symbols are of Latin origin; but they were modified and often amplified by inherited tradition, climate and the general trend of the national religious sentiment. So in Italian art, after its re-birth, we find a love of simple lines, of refined types, of flowers, and a striving at first unconscious, then definite, after classical ideals, while the Northern nations, less happy in their traditions, never quite conquered their love of barbaric splendour; a rose wrought in pure gold was to them more truly a symbol of divine love than a fresh rose of the field.
The most important factor in the modification of flower symbolism was climate. As the primary use of a symbol was to instruct the unlearned, the symbol which was to interpret the hidden mystery must be a familiar object. A rare or exotic plant would rather have complicated than simplified the teaching. So we find the pomegranate and the olive in Italian pictures, but not in those of the Netherlands; the columbine and the lily of the valley in German, but not in Spanish art.
But it was not climate alone that determined the use or disuse of any particular plant as a symbol. If the fleur-de-lys, founded upon the iris form, had not been borne by the House of Burgundy, which protected the early Flemish school, it is possible that the iris might not have appeared in the early Flemish pictures as a flower of the Virgin, and certainly had there not been a continual interchange of Flemish merchandise, which included painted panels, for Spanish gold, the iris would not have taken its place as the characteristic flower of a Spanish ‘Immaculate Conception.’
Also, had there not been ceaseless warfare and everlasting hatred between Florence and Siena, it is possible that Siena would have adopted the lily as an attribute of Mary in an Annunciation instead of using invariably the olive branch. But the lily was the badge of Florence and the cities were desperately jealous of each other, both in painting and in politics, and this seems to be the real reason of the conservatism of Sienese art.
On the whole the symbolism of the Netherlands is the most careful and just, and each flower was painted also with such exquisite minuteness that there is no possibility of mistaking the variety. Italian symbolism was always apt to be superficial, and after the fifteenth century often became confused with decoration. Also the Italians painted flowers carelessly, and the lesser kinds, those in the foreground of an Adoration, for instance, are frequently impossible to identify. In Germany symbolism is at times extravagant and far-fetched though always interesting. In Spain it is poor and almost entirely borrowed. A modern writer[8] observes of Spanish art that it is material, brutal, Roman, having, from its geographical position, escaped the idealism of Greek or the mysticism of Celtic influences; and the same cause may also explain the prosaicness of its symbolism.
The English love of flowers, very noticeable in early verse, found pictorial expression chiefly in the work of the miniaturists and in the ‘flower work’ details of architecture. The miniatures executed by monks usually pay attention to the symbolical value of each blossom, but the carved stone flowers common in both French and English Gothic churches were more often simply those which the fancy of the architect or the stone-cutter dictated and only represent vaguely ‘good works springing from the root of virtues.’
The happiest blooming time of these symbolical flowers was the fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century artists, still timid of innovations, had limited themselves to the lily and the rose. But with increasing skill they made a wider choice, though always under the eye and with the assistance of those learned in such matters, for the majority of sacred pictures were commissioned directly by the Church or were ordered as a gift to be presented to some religious community.
There were occasionally independent spirits who, in some favourite blossom, so far unnoticed, found beauty and symbolic fitness. Thus Sano di Pietro of Siena constantly paints the bright blue cornflower (which in Italy shares its name of fiordaliso with the iris, the lily and the heraldic fleur-de-lys) upon the heads of both angels and saints, meaning, perhaps, by the blue stars, to indicate that these beings were denizens of the heavenly spaces. However, as a rule, artists were conservative and glad to use the recognized symbols as a means of emphasizing and elucidating the sacred subject which they depicted.
But even before the end of the fifteenth century flowers began to be used for their own sake and not for their hidden meaning. Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Dürer painted just what flower or weed they chose, simply for its form or colour. In the sixteenth century flowers were often used merely as decoration, and later, with the exception of the rose, the lily, the olive branch and the palm, they lost all meaning. Carlo Maratta in the seventeenth century painted a figure of the Virgin[9] encircled by a heavy wreath of every sort of flower—daffodils, gentians, anemones, tulips, edelweiss, roses and lilies, all mixed together.