2i6 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



carry a symbol of her virtues, and the Hly is 

 always prominent among them. 



This particular aspect of the Virgin was 

 especially popular in Spain, where Murillo was 

 its finest exponent. The flowers of an Im- 

 maculate Conception are the rose, hly, olive and 

 palm, signifying love, purity, peace and victory. 

 Sometimes the iris, the royal hly, is added; 

 sometimes it replaces the lilium candidum. 

 Jose Antolines ' paints the iris only. 



In the chapter on ' Garlands of Roses ' we 

 remarked the thorns which in the mystic En- 

 closed Gardens of Germany illustrate the verse : 



' As a hly among thorns, so is my love among 

 the daughters.' 



With the closing of the fifteenth century 

 these thorn trellises passed from Northern art, 

 but the application of the metaphor to the 

 Virgin still persisted in Northern theology, and 

 since the Immaculate Conception had replaced 

 the Hortus Conclusus as a devotional subject, 

 it is as an attribute of the Virgin, risen to glory, 

 that we find the thorns, and in an Immaculate 

 Conception by Seghers ^ a child-angel flutters 



' Alte Pinakothek, Munich. * Uffizi, Florence. 



