The strawberry stands apart from all other symbolical fruits. It is found in Italian, Flemish and German art, and also in the English miniatures. There is a finely-executed Spanish miniature of the sixteenth century in South Kensington Museum. The Pelican in her Piety is in the centre and the border is formed of roses alternating with strawberries. As a symbol it is not only widespread, but of comparatively early origin. In Siena it appears as a flower of Heaven, growing with lilies, violets and carnations, in the ‘Paradise’ of Giovanni di Paolo painted in 1445;[345] and, almost at the same time, a master of the Upper Rhine painted the well-known ‘Madonna of the Strawberries,’[346] which represents the Virgin sitting upon the edge of a raised bed filled with exquisitely-rendered strawberries. Behind is a hedge of roses, and at her feet violets and lilies of the valley. In the foreground is a small figure of the donor kneeling among tufts of snowdrops. The snowdrop is rare as a symbol (though by no means misplaced in a Madonna picture, having all the qualities, except the perfume, of the lily of the valley), and it was probably the individual fancy of the donor.
The strawberry is not mentioned in Scripture, neither does it seem to have been remarked by those Fathers of the Church who concerned themselves with symbolism, but it was very successful in its appeal to the artists of the Renaissance. It is a very perfect fruit, with neither thorns nor stone, but sweet, soft and delicious through and through. Its flowers are of the whiteness of innocence and its leaves almost of the sacred trefoil form, and since it grows upon the ground, not on a tree, there is no possibility of its being the dread fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
Its meaning always appears to be the same; it is the symbol of perfect righteousness, or the emblem of the righteous man whose fruits are good works.
As the symbol of perfect righteousness, in Italy it is chiefly used in ‘Adorations,’ where the Infant Christ is laid upon the ground among the grass. Botticelli seems to have been the first to have placed it among the violets and daisies, but he had many followers, and a very charming picture, with the little scarlet berries in the foreground, is the ‘Adoration’ by Perugino, now in Munich. Botticelli may, however, have borrowed the symbol from Giovanni di Paolo,[347] who painted a small minutely-finished picture of the Virgin, seated on a cushion, with the Holy Child in her arms. Behind are fruit trees and strawberries, violets and carnations are at her feet, and since it was usual in Siena, in pictures where the Infant Saviour appears, to refer all symbols to Him, they are His attributes. In German art of the fifteenth century, on the other hand, the symbolical plants, including the strawberry, which appears in the mystical ‘Enclosed Gardens,’ express the virtues of Mary.
The symbolical strawberry is almost invariably accompanied by the violet, from which we may gather that the truly fruitful soul is always humble.
XXIV
FRUIT IN GARLANDS
Fruit in general signifies ‘the fruits of the Spirit—joy, peace and love.’ And therefore the painters of Northern Italy wove peach and plum, apples and grapes into heavy garlands, which they looped above the place where the Holy Child sat enthroned upon His mother’s knee, or they laid fresh, ripe fruit upon the step where the Virgin’s feet were resting.
The wreath of fruit, when festooned behind or below a saint, was more particularly a symbol of the good works of the righteous; when looped above his head, it is a festal wreath equalling the victor’s crown. Such a wreath is that of mingled fruit and flowers above the head of Mantegna’s ‘Triumphant Saint George.’[348]
But the fruit in many of the devotional pictures of the earlier Venetian masters would seem, like the rose gardens of Florence, to be partly votive. They wished to give of their best, and the cool fruit which came in high-piled boats to the gardenless city among the lagoons seemed infinitely precious to them—more precious, for they were a practical race of traders, than the fragile blossoms of ephemeral flowers. Besides, except for pinks, which, judging from various pictures, grew then as now in pots along the balconies, flowers to serve as models were rare in Venice.
Garlands of fruit, excellently modelled but somewhat wanting in softness and bloom, are especially remarkable in the work of the pupils of Squarcione, who taught in Padua during the last half of the fifteenth century. This famous School of Art is known to have been well furnished with ancient marbles of Greek and Roman origin, and it is to be supposed that there the pupils acquired a love for the classical festooned wreath. Mantegna’s wreaths, and those in the earlier work of Crivelli, are firmly bound and formal. But later, Crivelli laid classicism aside, painting fruit with a freedom and profusion which is quite his own, though there is ever the feeling that it is sculptured and coloured stone, not soft and perfumed fruit-flesh. He, in one picture, paints fruit decoratively, bound with its foliage into a sort of bower for the Virgin, places it symbolically in the hand of the Infant Christ, and also lays it as a votive offering at the Virgin’s feet.[349]