96 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



of Mary with the Child in her arms, as Queen of 

 Heaven, or as ' La Purissima,' became common. 

 Previously she had been painted as a human 

 mother with the sorrows of her motherhood 

 still upon her. As the mother, the greatest 

 of whose seven sorrows has not yet come, she 

 would not yet carry the rose crown which sym- 

 bolized joy, even though it were heavenly joy, 

 and by the time religious sentiment demanded 

 representations of Christ's mother, risen to glory, 

 all sorrow past, the Church had decided to de- 

 pict her as the woman * clothed with the sun 

 and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.* 



Akin to the wreaths of roses worn by angels 

 and saints are the hedges and rose-trellises of 

 Paradise. 



Dante pictures Heaven as one great and 

 marvellous rose-bloom : 



' How wide the leaves 

 Extended to the utmost, of this rose; ^ 



which in bright expansiveness 



Lays forth its gradual blooming, redolent 

 Of praises to the never wintering sun.' ^ 



But the artists of the Church have usually de- 



' Paradiso, xxx. 114. ' Ibid. 121. 



, 



