274 FLORAL SYMBOLISM 



there is ever the feeUng that it is sculptured 

 and coloured stone, not soft and perfumed 

 fruit-flesh. He, in one picture, paints fruit 

 decoratively, bound with its foliage into a 

 sort of bower for the Virgin, places it sym- 

 bolically in the hand of the Infant Christ, 

 and also lays it as a votive offering at the 

 Virgin's feet,' 



In a picture by Giorgio Schiavone, another 

 pupil of Squarcione, odd little angels offer dishes 

 of fruit to the Infant Christ.^ 



But, except in Northern Italy, fruit in gar- 

 lands was more used in decoration than in 

 devotional pictures. Magnificent wreaths of 

 carved stone fruit and foliage droop on either 

 side of the great circular windows of Siena 

 Cathedral; there are heavy painted wreaths of 

 it beneath the figures of the Apostles in the 

 chapel of the Vatican decorated by Fra Angelico; 

 and the Delia Robbias enclosed some of their 

 most lovely works, with apples, pears, lemons, 

 pine-cones and pomegranates, growing stiffiy 

 and beautifully into a symmetrical border. 

 Fruit-forms were, indeed, infinitely better suited 



• Brera, Milan. ^ National Gallery, London. 



