254 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



home to commemorate the birth of Christ. It 

 is the Tree of Eden, which Christ by His birth 

 and death transmuted into a tree of Paradise. 



The apple is the most usual fruit in the hand 

 of the Infant Christ, but some Flemish painters 

 of the early sixteenth century give Him grapes 

 instead. The grapes symbolize the divine blood 

 by which souls lost through Adam's fall are re- 

 deemed. Gerard David ^ puts a cluster of white 

 grapes in the tiny hand ; Lucas van Ley den ^ white 

 grapes also with leaves and tendrils; and in an- 

 other picture Lucas van Leyden ^ places the apple 

 and the grapes together upon the broad ledge in 

 the foreground. In this last there is the same 

 idea of exchange which is found more clearly 

 expressed in the picture by Mabuse at Berlin. 



This substitution of the fruit of the vine for 

 the apple of Eden seems only to be found in 

 the Netherlands. In a very beautiful picture 

 by Botticelli, the grapes held by the angel have 

 a simpler meaning. They, with the corn, are 

 the direct emblems of the body and the blood 

 of the Saviour, and foretell the coming sacrifice 



' Museum, Rouen. ' Alte Pinakothek, Munich. 



* Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. 



