Dante pictures Heaven as one great and marvellous rose-bloom:
‘How wide the leaves
Extended to the utmost, of this rose;[88]
...... which in bright expansiveness
Lays forth its gradual blooming, redolent
Of praises to the never wintering sun.’[89]
But the artists of the Church have usually depicted Heaven not as a rose but as a rose-garden; and as a second and more perfect Eden rather than as the Holy City, the stupendous piece of jeweller’s work described in the Revelation of Saint John. A few Flemish and German artists have attempted to realize the jasper wall, the ‘pure gold like unto clear glass,’ and the ‘foundations garnished with all manner of precious stones,’ but for the majority of artists on both sides of the Alps Heaven was a paradise, a garden. The prophet Esdras describes it in detail:
‘Twelve trees laden with divers fruits,
‘And as many fountains flowing with milk and honey, and seven mighty mountains, whereupon there grow roses and lilies.’[90]
The Byzantine Guide to Painting[91] directs that Paradise be depicted as ‘surrounded by a wall of crystal and pure gold, adorned with trees filled with bright birds,’ so combining both visions of the home of the blessed.