IXTHE OLIVE

‘Strew thrice nine olive boughsOn either hand; and offer up thy prayer,’112

‘Strew thrice nine olive boughs

On either hand; and offer up thy prayer,’112

counselled the Greeks when conscious that the deities were offended.

The olive was the gift of Pallas. The tale ran that in the reign of Cecrops both Poseidon and Athena contended for the possession of Athens. The gods resolved that whichever of them produced the gift most useful to mortals should have possession of the land. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and straightway a horse appeared. But Athena planted the olive and the gods thereupon decreed that the olive was more useful to man than the horse, and gave the city to the goddess, from whom it was called Athenæ.113

But the symbolism of the olive, foundedupon its healing qualities and its oil’s well-known property of calming roughened water, was not only Grecian: it was wide-spread, and the Romans used it politically as well as religiously. Their heralds carried olive on an embassy of peace, and the custom lingered in Italy through the Middle Ages; Dante describing how the multitude ‘Flock round the herald sent with olive branch.’

In Christian art the olive also invariably represents peace or reconciliation, and it is first found in the Catacombs, where there is a curious painting of the mystic fish which swims towards the Cross with a sprig of olive in its mouth. The fish, by the well-known anagram, represents Christ, who, through the Cross, brings peace on earth.

A dove with an olive twig in its beak is also found upon early Christian tombs. And then, as Tertullian says, ‘it is a symbol of peace even older than Christianity itself’114—the herald of the peace of God from the very beginning. Sometimes the word itself, ‘Pax,’115is added, thereby marking the sense beyond all possibility of dispute; viz., that it is meant to assert of thesoul of the deceased that it has departed in the peace of God and of his Church.116

Tertullian refers, of course, to the dove sent forth by Noah which returned across the waters, and ‘Lo! in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off,’ sign that the wrath of God was appeased. The dove, bearing the twig of olive, executed in coloured marbles, occurs repeatedly in the decoration of Saint Peter’s. Here the dove represents the Church bearing the Gospel message of peace to the world. The same emblem is found in the decoration of St John Lateran, and Pope Innocent X. incorporated it with his coat of arms.

The olive naturally appears as an attribute in allegorical figures of Peace. One of the earliest and most famous of these figures is in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s great fresco entitled ‘Good Government.’117The golden-haired Peace, who wears a white robe, is crowned with olive, and carries an olive branch in her hand. She has a beauty of her own, but compared with the more virile figures in the composition, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance and Justice, she is alittle heavy and inert, a little wanting in interest, as the citizens perhaps would have found their daily life were they condemned to days of peace.

In small, fierce Siena the olive was a very favourite symbol and found more frequently than any other. One of the most curious characteristics of religious art is the inexactitude with which it reflects a people’s mood, for the ideal upon the wall above the altar is often just precisely that to which they do not strive. When the Medici were in power and Florentine social life was at its worldliest, simplicity and purity, almost austerity, were demanded of the artist, and the lily was the favourite symbol. Murillo painted Madonnas to the Church’s order, sweet and forgiving, kind to indulgence, almost voluptuous, at a moment when not only the devotions of Jews and heretics but the private life of every citizen of Seville was under stern control. And in Seville, with inquisitorial fires blazing, the Virgin had as attribute the rose of love and charity. So the turbulent Sienese, who, when no enemy knocked at the gates, fought with one another, loved a still and peaceful art. It was conservative, for they cared forno novelty, no variety of subject, pose or action. And their favourite symbol was the olive branch of peace. The angel Gabriel almost invariably carries olive,118Saint John the Evangelist119and Saint Ansano,120their own saint, both hold branches of it, and it crowns the blonde curls of many a little angel.

In representations of the first and third persons of the Holy Trinity the olive branch is very rare. Upon some ancient crucifixes, however, where a hand holding a wreath represents the Eternal Father, the wreath, though usually of laurel, in some instances is formed of olive. In the Crucifix of the tenth century, known as the Crucifix of Lothair,121the wreath is distinctly of olive, but since it encircles the Holy Dove the olive is perhaps equally the attribute of the Holy Ghost. In the Crucifix upon the Manual of Prayer of Charles the Bald,122the wreath is of laurel and there is no dove.

Mabillon speaks of a group of the Trinity in human form, sculptured by order of Abelardat the Paraclete. In it the Father wore a closed crown, the Son a crown of thorns, and the Holy Ghost a crown of olive. The group has long since disappeared, and there seems no other instance of the Holy Ghost in human form being represented with the olive. A dove bearing an olive twig could not be an emblem of the Holy Ghost unless the bird’s head were encircled with a halo.

But Christian art uses the ancient symbol of peace repeatedly when illustrating Christ’s life upon earth. First we find the angel Gabriel bringing to the Virgin a branch of olive as token that his message is of peace. Sometimes he is also crowned with olive. He comes crowned with peace, and the branch in his hand foreshadows the reconciliation between God and man which is to come by the Child whose advent he announces.

The olive branch took precedence of the lily as the symbol carried by the announcing angel. Originated probably by Simone Martini, one of its earliest instances is in his Annunciation now in the Uffizi. In the Florentine school the simple stick carried by the herald angel evolved, as wehave seen, through the fleur-de-lys to the stem of lilies. In Siena it was the meaning of the wand, rather than the wand itself, which was developed. The wand simply marked that Gabriel was a herald; that it was a message of peace and goodwill which he brought was shown by the grey-green leaves of the olive. As a symbol it was by no means of Simone Martini’s own finding, for it was a very usual political symbol of the day, but he seems to have been the first to have placed it in the angel Gabriel’s hand, and the school of painting in Siena whole-heartedly and faithfully adopted his device. The general trend of Sienese symbolism was to direct devotion to the incarnate Godhead rather than to Mary of Nazareth, and it is of Him, as the bringer of peace on earth, that the branch of olive tells, as elsewhere the white lily proclaims the virginity of the coming motherhood.

Then again, on that night when the angels sang of peace on earth and goodwill towardsmen—

... ‘the meek-eyed Peace,She crown’d with Olive green, came softly slidingDown through the turning sphear.’123

... ‘the meek-eyed Peace,

She crown’d with Olive green, came softly sliding

Down through the turning sphear.’123

In one of the most naïve and fascinating of all Botticelli’s pictures124the angels crowned with olive hold up branches of it against the golden sky. Other angels, half distraught with joy, run with waving olive-sprays to greet the astonished shepherds.

The same subject is much more soberly treated by Sano di Pietro.125One angel, flying through the twilight, brings a twig of olive to the shepherd who is sleeping on the hillside.

There are many symbolical fruits placed in the hand of the Infant Christ. Botticelli paints a pomegranate, Mabuse a quince, Memling an apple, Il Moretto a pear, and each represents the individual artist’s conviction as to what really was the unnamed fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which grew in the midst of Eden. The placing of the olive, symbol of reconciliation, where it might be confused with the fatal fruit which made that reconciliation so imperative was carefully avoided, and we rarely find the olive branch inthe hand of the Child when seated on His mother’s knee. And there was still another reason. He had Himself said: ‘I come not to bring peace upon earth, but the sword,’ therefore the earlier and more literal artists refused Him the symbol of peace, even as divine peace. There are, however, instances of the Christ-Child with the olive branch, of which the most important is the ‘Holy Family’ by Mantegna.126The Christ, a beautiful and dignified childish figure of three or four years old, stands on a sort of pedestal with the little Saint John. He holds a branch of olive in His right hand, upright like a sceptre, and in the other is the crystal orb which symbolizes sovereignty. Saint Joseph stands behind and the Virgin lays a rosebud at her Son’s feet.

The Bringer of Divine Peace was an aspect of the incarnate Son of God on which Mantegna laid emphasis. In the ‘Holy Family,’ now in Dresden, painted about the same period, the little Saint John holds a branch of olive (from which two tiny side-sprays grow naturally in the form of a cross) as an attribute of the Holy Child.

The olive branches of the ‘Entry into Jerusalem,’ like the olives of Gethsemane, were only accidentally allegorical. The villagers of the Mount of Olives cut down branches (presumably olive branches) ‘and strewed them in the way.’ With palm branches they would salute any popular leader, and it is scarcely to be believed that they definitely selected the olive and palm with the full understanding of the symbolism which the Christian Church attaches to them.

‘The olive branches signify his office as peace-bringer and the palms his victory over Satan.’127

There is in the Catacombs a figure of the Virgin Mary praying between two olive trees. Her name is inscribed above her head. She is standing with raised hands in the early attitude of prayer, and these olive trees apparently symbolize ‘the peace of God which passeth all understanding.’ But after the twelfth century the Church had identified the personality of the Virgin with the figure of Wisdom eulogized in Ecclesiasticus, and the olives which are sometimesfound beside her refer to the verse which compares her to

‘A fair olive tree in a pleasant field.’128

Botticelli painted a beautiful ‘Madonna of the Olives’ for the Church of S. Spirito. Vasari writes of it: ‘In S. Spirito in Florence he has painted a picture for the Chapel of the Bardi which is carefully executed and well finished, where there are some olives and palms painted with great love.’129In another picture by Botticelli130angels hold above the Virgin’s head a lightly-framed crown of gold which is decorated with fresh sprays of lily, palm and olive.

The most popular of modern Italian representations of the Virgin and Child is very justly that painted by Niccolò Barabino131and entitled ‘Quasi Oliva Speciosa in Campis.’ Large branches of olive, painted also ‘with great love,’ are placed about the feet of the sweet-faced Mother, who peeps through her heavy white veil, and they almost hide the fruit of temptation which lies on the ground beneath.

Martin SchöngauerGABRIEL CROWNED WITH OLIVE BRINGS THE MESSAGE OF RECONCILIATION(Print Room, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)

Martin Schöngauer

GABRIEL CROWNED WITH OLIVE BRINGS THE MESSAGE OF RECONCILIATION

(Print Room, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)

One of theputtiwhich fly round the feet of the Madonna in a Spanish ‘Immaculate Conception’ usually carries a branch of olive, and that, too, bears the same meaning. As an olive tree in a pleasant field she brings peace and consolation to mankind. She is the ‘Mater Consolatrix.’

Sodoma painted a stately figure of Saint Victor,132with sword and palm, and the little rose-crowned child-angel who supports his shield holds above it a branch of olive, symbol of the peace which to a Christian warrior should be the end of victory.

The same idea dominates the ‘Judith’133of Botticelli. The slayer of her country’s enemy returns thoughtfully home, satisfied but not exultant. In her right hand is her sword, carried low; upright, in her left, a branch of olive. Though her deed was bloody, she had brought peace to the land.

Flemish art neglects the olive, and except in the drawings of Martin Schöngauer,134whose grave gentle Gabriels wear olive crowns, it is seldom seen in Germany. The reason is easyto guess. The olive tree not growing in the North, the painters would be at a loss to find a branch from which to draw, and the people, unacquainted with the leaf, would scarcely recognize its hidden message of peace. In France it is seen less rarely. On the sculptured portal of the Cathedral of Amiens there is a curious rendering of the parable of the Wise and the Foolish Virgins. A withered olive tree, without fruit or leaves, grows by the side of the foolish maidens, and a healthy olive tree, laden with fruit and ready with abundance of oil, is beside those maidens who were wise.

But on the whole the olive is an Italian, and more particularly a Sienese, symbol, though Botticelli also loved the silvery leaves. In his magnificent ‘Pallas taming the Centaur,’135painted for Lorenzo de’ Medici, to commemorate his diplomatic victory over the King of Naples and the League in 1480, olive encircles the head of the lovely goddess and is wreathed about her dress. The surface meaning of the picture is that, by the arts of peace taught them by the beneficent goddess, men were enabled to overcomethe savagery of nature, typified by the centaur. But it also shows, allegorically, how the wise statesmanship of Lorenzo (with whose badge, rings interlaced, the gown of Pallas is ‘semé’) guided the war-loving League, here figured as the centaur, into the ways of Peace.

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