Spinello Aretino paints Gabriel with the palm. In his Annunciation at Arezzo[161] the angel is first seen above, flying with the palm from before God’s throne. Below he kneels, the palm in his hand, before the Virgin. Ambrogio Lorenzetti[162] and others follow the same tradition, but the palm was soon superseded in Siena by the olive and elsewhere by the lily, which was adopted by painters of all nations as the flower of the Annunciation.
The Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine gives an account of the death and burial of the Virgin. The legend is said to be an invention of the Gnostics, and there is reason to believe of Lencius in the second century.[163]
Shortly before the Virgin’s death the angel Gabriel again appeared to her, and ‘he gave her a branch of palm from Paradise which he commanded should be borne before her bier.’
This branch of palm was clearly the symbol of victory over sin, since she had passed a full lifetime in perfect sinlessness and her surpassing sorrows had entitled her to the reward of martyrdom.
The Legend continues:
‘And the palm shone which he had left behind with great clearness; it was green like a natural branch and its leaves shimmered like the morning star.’ The palm, therefore, is distinguished from the palms of the martyrs by being encircled with stars. A Sienese artist paints seven,[164] the sacred number, corresponding with the Virgin’s sorrows; other artists give twelve, foreshadowing that there should be upon her head ‘a crown of twelve stars.’
Usually, in Italian pictures of the death or ‘Dormition’ of the Virgin, an angel, or Saint John the Evangelist, appears at her bedside carrying the palm. Northern art was almost entirely uninfluenced by the details given by Jacobus de Voragine of the Virgin’s death and burial, and though in Germany ‘The Death of the Virgin’ is a very favourite subject, the palm is never introduced. Saint John frequently, however, holds a lighted taper, and some form of the starry palm tradition may have drifted northwards, for the master of the Sterzing Altar[165] paints a cluster of star-shaped flowers in the hand of Saint John, who bends over the inanimate form of the Virgin.
Her body was carried by divine command to the valley of Jehoshaphat, ‘and John bare the palm branch in front of it.’
This scene, too, belongs to Italian art, and usually makes a beautiful processional group. Saint John, with the privilege of a son, walks before the bier. Duccio di Buoninsegna[166] paints him with the closed narrow palm of a martyr. In the charming little long-shaped picture by Fra Angelico[167] the palm has its fan-shaped leaves spread wide and it shines as if it were of gold.
In the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of the Spanish school one of the attendant putti usually carries a palm. This may be the palm of victory over sin and death, or, following another authority, it may be a symbol of the Immaculate Conception, since it bears fruit at the same moment at which it flowers.[168]