Raphael,[267] too, gives a single lily rising from among the roses, and both he and Sodoma seem to have adopted the later fashion of considering the lily as exclusively the Virgin Mary’s flower, and instead of serried lilies, representing bands of angels and virgin saints, they paint one only flower, emblem of the Queen of Virgins rising to Heaven attended by the glowing souls of martyrs.
Botticelli,[268] on the other hand, has left the roses and painted lilies only, lilies crowded together in such a mass of loveliness that the mourners seem blinded even to the gorgeous bow of angels in the sky and to the greater wonder in the opening heavens high above.
Benozzo Gozzoli[269] gives the flower-filled tomb, but neglects the symbolism of the legend, for to the roses he adds daisies and jasmine. It is simply a collection of the flowers sacred to the Virgin.
Giulio Romano,[270] in the Madonna di Monteluce, paints neither roses nor lilies, merely small, indeterminate blossoms, mauve, blue and yellow.
On one panel,[271] of the fifteenth century, which represents ‘The Giving of the Girdle to Saint Thomas,’ cut roses and lilies lie upon the top of the closed tomb, which seems a misapprehension of the legend, but possibly the artist merely intended to paint the flowers usually used as attributes of the Virgin—the rose of love and the lily of purity—without any reference to the story as told in the Golden Legend.
But though the lilies of the Virgin’s tomb represent angels and virgin saints, in those pictures of her Coronation or Assumption, where no tomb is shown, the flower is the symbol of her own purity. Through her perfect purity she has attained the crown, therefore it is with stems of white lilies that the rose-crowned angels hail her Queen.
Fra Filippo Lippi[272] paints her kneeling to receive the crown from God the Father:
‘Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet
As puff on puff of grated orris-root.’[273]