262 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



would be no particular reason to think that the 

 artists of the ' Quattrocento ' meant more than 

 simply to indicate some heavenly fruit when they 

 placed the pomegranate in the hand of the Child 

 Christ. In accordance with the Byzantine 

 tradition to which Siena held, they regarded 

 Him as the Royal Child come to earth with 

 Heavenly gifts in His hand; they had not yet 

 adopted the symbolism of the North, which saw 

 in the Infant Christ the second Adam, holding 

 the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good 

 and Evil, though indeed Botticelli, who almost 

 always gives some indication of coming sorrow 

 in Christ's childhood, seems to have found some 

 sad inner meaning in the symbol. 



But in Dante's hand the fruit could not be 

 the fruit of Paradise, and it may therefore have 

 some further meaning even when held by the 

 Infant Saviour. 



Walter Pater writes : ' The mystical fruit, 

 which because of the multitude of its seeds was 

 to the Romans a symbol of fecundity ... to the 

 middle age became a symbol of the fruitful earth 

 itself; and then of that other seed sown in the 

 dark underworld: and at last of the whole 



