128 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



bloomed with delicate white briar-roses — an 

 exquisite figure of Love's triumph over Pain. 



Sometimes, in pathetic forecast, the Child 

 Christ has the crown of thorns hung on His tiny 

 wrist ' or plays with it as with a toy, and in a 

 very charming picture,^ with less poignant and 

 more pleasing symbolism, a waiting child-angel 

 stands by with a wreath of the blue sea-holly. 



In Spain the Christian faith was stern. 

 Faith and suffering were more closely allied 

 than faith and joy. They had no ' jesters of 

 the Lord,' and their saints glorified God by self- 

 inflicted pain rather than by acts of mercy. 

 So their Christ in childhood was not a smiling, 

 unconscious bambino, but a sad-faced child who 

 wounds Himself with the rose- twigs which He 

 twists into a crown. The rose-thorn tears His 

 flesh but the roses lie beside Him and round 

 His feet, for His griefs and sufferings were the 

 outcome of His divine love. Both Zurburan ^ 

 and Alonzo Cano * painted fine pictures on this 

 theme. 



' Botticelli, Poldi PezzoU Collection, Milan. 

 ' Botticelli, Borghese Gallery, Rome. 



* Museo Provincial, Seville. 



* Collection of the Duchess of Fife. 



