12 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



occupied the religious painter ever since, the 

 painting of a soul's quality, the making visible 

 to the world of the beauty of holiness. 



During the great century of art, achievement 

 came. Raphael, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, 

 Perugino required and used no symbol to ex- 

 press the majesty of Christ or the purity of the 

 Virgin Mother. They had that power to make 

 visible the intangible which, in art, is genius. 

 But among the earlier artists of the thirteenth 

 and fourteenth centuries, he who was unable 

 to show by the announcing angel's attitude 

 and mien that his message was one of peace and 

 goodwill, placed a branch of olive in his hand, 

 and he who despaired of adequately depicting 

 the immaculate purity of the Virgin, empha- 

 sized his point by setting a pot of spotless lilies 

 by her side. So was the intention of the least- 

 accomplished of artists made clear, even to 

 the unlettered. 



After the first effervescence of the Renais- 

 sance had died down, the laws of sacred art 

 became once more fixed, though never again 

 (except in Spain beneath the Inquisition) with 

 the strictness of the Byzantine school. Art 



