258 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



have the identical position in an ' Enthroned 

 Madonna ' by Lorenzo da San Severino.' 



As the grouping of these two fruits is so in- 

 sistently repeated there is reason to think that it 

 was no chance arrangement. The painter seems 

 to attach some definite meaning to their juxta- 

 position, and since not Crivelli only, but also 

 Francia and Lorenzo da San Severino, place them 

 together, and well forward in the picture where 

 the eye cannot miss them, they are apparently re- 

 cognized symbols, not the whim of a single painter. 



The apple is, probably, here as elsewhere, 

 the fatal fruit of Eden, and the gourd may re- 

 present the fruit which is to be the antidote, in 

 the same sense that the grape is occasionally 

 used by painters of the early Flemish school. 

 In this case the gourd would represent the Re- 

 surrection and be the revival of a very ancient 

 symbol which has an interesting history. Among 

 the wall paintings of the Catacombs the story 

 of Jonah is very repeatedly found. He is taken 

 as the type of the risen Christ,^ since Christ 



' National Gallery. 



* " For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the 

 whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three 

 nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt. xii. 40). 





