Pl. 21.
1. Tree of Life and Lions. Gate of Mycenæ. 2. Persian or Sicilian Silk. Tree of Life and Leopards.
Pl. 22.
1. Split Lotus Fruit on Chinese Bowl. 2. Split Lotus resembling Tree of Life. Frieze by Benozzo Gozzoli, Ricardi Palace, Florence. 3. Petal of Flower on Glass Bowl from Southern Italy. British Museum.
There is a palm-tree which absolutely carries a cone in the heart of its crown of fronds.[112] This may have helped to preserve the original motive of the sacred tree of life. The cone form in classical art was drawn from the pine cone and the artichoke; and in mediæval art these were sometimes replaced by the pomegranate, and in the late Renaissance by the pine-apple, newly arrived from the West Indies.[113] It is a good example of the blending of one vegetable form into another, making the sequence, of which each phase in the East had an historical cause or a symbolical meaning,[114] but which in Europe had gradually lost all motive, and was simply an acknowledged decorative form.[115] In architectural ornament it is called the honeysuckle,[116] which it had grown to resemble in the days of Greece.
Pl. 23.