GARLANDS OF ROSES 95 



compact little figure, not a slender Italian 

 maiden, supported by angelic visions, already 

 half in Heaven, but of the sturdy Flemish type, 

 who, having with clear brain calculated the cost, 

 sets herself with stoicism to endure the pain 

 which would be rewarded by the martyr's 

 crown of unfading roses. 



Curiously enough, the Virgin's crown is 

 usually of gold and precious stones, though in 

 one of Velasquez's rare religious pictures, ' The 

 Coronation of the Virgin,' ' God the Father places 

 upon her head a wreath of red and white rose 

 blooms. In the best period of Italian art the 

 Virgin wears no crown except at a * Coronation,' 

 when most often it is of gold. In Germany the 

 crowns are large and heavily jewelled, and in 

 the Netherlands a jewelled fillet was very 

 generally placed upon her hair. A notable and 

 beautiful exception to these fillet-like coronets 

 is the magnificent symbolical crown of jewels 

 and fresh flowers which she wears as Queen of 

 Heaven in Hubert van Eyck's ' Adoration of 

 the Lamb.' ^ It was only in late art, that is, 

 after the sixteenth century, that representations 



' Prado, Madrid. =" Ghent Cathedral. 



