THE LILY OF THE SAINTS 227 



pink flowers resembling the oleander, and to- 

 day the country people in Tuscany call the 

 oleander II Mazzo di San Giuseppe, that is, ' The 

 Staff of Saint Joseph.' 



Northern art, uninfluenced by the Legend a 

 Aurea, gives Saint Joseph no flowering staff. 

 Lucas van Ley den' paints him as an entirely 

 unidealized workman with tools upon his back 

 but places the lily in his hand. And he has also 

 a lily in the ' Holy Family ' of Geertgen tot Sint 

 Jans,^ though in the many representations of 

 ' The Adoration of the Magi ' in North Germany 

 and the Netherlands he is undistinguished by 

 any attribute. 



After the seventeenth century Saint Joseph 

 began to have a status of his own as patron of 

 married virtue. Single figures of him appear 

 carrying a lily, not a staff, and in the ecclesiasti- 

 cal art of the present day he carries sometimes 

 the Child-Christ and sometimes a book, but also 

 invariably a hly. A large oleograph which hangs 

 in the Church of the Angels at La Verna shows the 

 Child-Christ crowning him with a wreath of lilies. 



Occasionally the lily is given to young girls 



' Alte Pinakothek, Munich. * Rijks Museum, Amsterdam. 





