THE FLOWERS OF THE VIRGIN 203 



with the same desire to present and sacrifice 

 to their Lady the flowers which were by asso- 

 ciation peculiarly hers, painted roses and lihes 

 carefully and beautifully in the foreground of 

 her pictures. It was their gift to the Madonna, 

 as the paper roses on so many modern altars 

 and the wild flowers on the wayside shrines are 

 also gifts. 



In Northern Italy, particularly among those 

 who studied in the school of Squarcione, fruit 

 took the place of the votive flowers, and is 

 laid before the Madonna and the Child, or 

 hung in garlands across the upper part of the 

 picture. 



The painters of the Italian Renaissance, in 

 spite of dihgent classical study, were probably 

 quite unconscious of this survival of paganism 

 in their work. But the ancient traditions of 

 the soil did crop up from time to time, in the 

 same way that traces of the Norse conception 

 of Heaven as a magnificent big-game hunt 

 appear occasionally beneath the symbolism of 

 Christian mediaeval art in Germany. 



North of the Alps, where the pre-Christian 

 sacrifices had usually run with blood, there was 



