THE LILY 59 



plicity. Each artist knew that the true beauty 

 of the Queen of Heaven was not to be 

 expressed by jewels or wonderfully-wrought 

 raiment, and as the words of Saint Dominic 

 passed from mouth to mouth, the people of 

 Italy came to understand that the most 

 precious virtue of Christ's Mother was her 

 purity, symbolized very fitly by the lily. The 

 symbol, beautiful in itself, and so suggestive 

 of the quality it represented, impressed the 

 imagination clearly, and presently there was a 

 bloom of pictured lilies. 



The mosaicist Cavallini,' Duccio di Buon- 

 insegna,== Giotto,^ Simone Martini,'^ and Orcagna ^ 

 led the way, and the Christian artists of the 

 world have followed. The earliest lilies flowered 

 in Rome; but Siena, Umbria, Florence, Venice, 

 and later the Netherlands and Germany, all soon 

 had their votaries of the mystic flower. The 

 French ivory workers of the fourteenth century, 

 influenced doubtless by the tradition of the seal- 

 cutters, frequently placed flowers in the hand of 



' S. Maria Trastevere, Rome. ' National Gallery, London. 



3 Lower Church, Assisi. * Uffizi, Florence. 



Or San iVIichele, Florence. 



