In the no less picturesque and poetical story of Persephone (or Proserpina), the daughter of Ceres, carried away by Pluto, the king of the underworld, darkness, and death, we have a beautiful allegory of the spring and the winter, since Persephone was allowed to return every year to the earth for a season, after she had eaten of the fatal pomegranate tree which grew in Pluto's garden.
One might multiply instances of the symbolic character of classical story and its symbolic embodiment in Greek and Roman art, but we must pass on to touch upon other sources and aspects of symbolism and emblem in art.
We know that many of our old fairy tales have a symbolical origin in ancient mythology, and have taken new and varied forms and local colours as they have travelled from their southern and eastern homes, and become naturalized in the art and literatures of different countries.
In such tales as "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," the climbing hero ascending the heavens to destroy the giant of darkness, in the first, the hero penetrating the darkness and awakening his destined bride from her enchanted sleep, in the second, for instance, the old solar mythology has been traced, and if we could trace the old folk tales back to their sources we might find them all related to primitive mythology or hero and ancestor worship. Thus do the spirits of the remote past sit at our firesides still, and kindle the imagination of our little folks: and in the rich tapestry of story and picture which each age weaves around it, elements from many different sources are continually and almost inextricably interwoven, as if the warp of human wonder and imagination was crossed with many coloured threads of mythological lore, history and allegory, symbolism and romance.
The early Christians, no less than the pagans, felt the necessity for symbols of their faith; and while at first borrowing considerably, and incorporating in their art forms belonging to the other faith they were supplanting, gradually, with the rise of power and influence, emblems more peculiarly belonging to an expression of the Christian ideal were adopted, or underwent considerable transformation. The design met with in the mosaics of the sixth century at Ravenna, the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, of the two stags drinking from a fountain, embodying the Psalmist's verse beginning, "As the hart panteth for the water brooks," although from the imagery of the older Scriptures, became an emblem of Christianity. The peacock appears, too, in Byzantine art, carved upon stone sarcophagi as an emblem of immortal life, either from the many eyes its feathers always open, or more probably because the eye feathers are shed and renew themselves every year. The vine, too, appears constantly as a Christian emblem, although with the Greeks it was sacred to Dionysos, and represented to them the divine, life-giving earth-spirit continually renewing itself, and bringing joy to men.
Although the symbolic use no less than the decorative beauty of winged figures had long ago been recognized, as Asiatic, Egyptian, and Greek art show, yet the Christian angel, both in its refined, half-classical form, as developed by the early Italian painters and sculptors from the thirteenth century onwards, and in northern Gothic work, became a distinct and beautiful type in art. In the work of Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli the angel figures are especially lovely.
Alinari Photo.]
CHRISTIAN EMBLEM. STAGS DRINKING (MAUSOLEO DI GALLA PLACIDIA, RAVENNA).
