But in the early instances of a fruit in the Christ-Child’s hand it does not appear to be definitely the death-giving apple of Eden. It is fruit of Paradise, a delight promised to the blessed which the King of Heaven brings down with Him to earth.
In the early school of Siena, as we have already seen, the little Christ was still the Royal Infant, still ‘trailing clouds of glory,’ untouched by shadow of suffering, and usually bearing in His hand some indication of His high estate. Often His hand was raised in blessing, sometimes He held a lily of Paradise.
On an early fourteenth-century panel in the manner of the Lorenzetti, in Siena Academy, the Child holds a fruit, but it is not clearly defined. In one of Sano di Pietro’s most attractive works,[308] however, which is dated 1444, the Child, seated on the Virgin’s knee, holds a golden orange with its foliage. To His right and left are saints, and close around there are six angels crowned with blue corn-flowers and carrying roses and lilies. No attempt is made to realize earthly conditions; the glowing scene is set in Heaven, and the little Lord of Heaven holds in His hand a celestial fruit, just one of such fruits as hang upon the trees in Giovanni di Paolo’s ‘Paradise.’[309]
In another picture by Sano di Pietro,[310] the Child (perhaps the most charming ‘Bambino’ ever painted in Siena) holds in His hand a bunch of cherries.
Cherries, painted more than once within the tiny hand by Sano di Pietro, are always taken as the delicious fruit. Like the lilies of the earlier Paradises they typify the delights of the blessed, and in German art particularly they are painted often as the peculiar fruit of Heaven. They are never taken as the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and therefore, at least in the early Sienese school, this fruit held by the Infant Christ would seem to be the fruit of Paradise.
In Northern art, in the work of the French ivory cutters, and particularly in the work of Memling and of those artists influenced by him, the apple takes precedence of all other symbols in the Christ-Child’s hand. Northern theologians, studying the Old Testament carefully, and deeply interested in types and anti-types, saw in Adam the type of Christ. The Biblia Pauperum, originally designed with the intention of teaching the faith to the unlettered, served as a pattern-book for stained glass and other ecclesiastical decoration from the ninth century onwards. Each page is divided into three sections. In the centre is a scene from the life of Christ; in the sections on either side is a scene from Old Testament History, showing some incident in the lives of those men who are considered to be types of Christ, which foreshadowed some act of the Redeemer. And chief of these types is Adam. Therefore in the Northern Church the idea of Jesus Christ as the second Adam was familiar, and the fruit in His hand was perfectly understood as a symbol. Memling, who, if he did not originate the symbolism of the apple of Eden, made it famous by constant repetition on his magnificently executed panels, usually treats it quite simply. The apple is the symbol of the Fall, and therefore of the world’s sin, which Christ accepts as His own. In the fine example at Chatsworth, the Infant Christ, with one hand pointing to the book of prophecy, takes with the other the apple held by an attendant angel. But one painting by Memling[311] is especially interesting, since it links together the two symbols, the fruit of heavenly bliss and the fruit of Man’s redemption. The Child sits upon His mother’s knee, and in one hand clutches cherries, the fruit of Paradise. He seems, however, on the point of relinquishing them to take the apple from the angel’s hand, as He relinquished heavenly joy to take upon Himself the sin of the world.
Hugo van der Goes
Photo Brogi
THE FRUIT OF DAMNATION EXCHANGED FOR THE FRUIT OF REDEMPTION