VITHE CARNATION
Inearly German devotional poems thenelken, the pink, carnation or gillyflower, is occasionally used as the simile of the Virgin. Conrad von Würtzburg writes:
‘Thou art a fragrant gillyflower sprig.’
But it has been given no definite and individual status as a symbol.
Very frequently, however, in ecclesiastical art, more particularly that of Venice and Northern Italy, it is found where the rose might be expected. It is placed with the lily in a vase beside the Virgin, with the violet before the Infant Christ, and with the wild strawberries among the grass of Paradise.
In Germany the carnation is seen falling from above with heavenly roses, and occasionally, even, in spite of the written legend, it replaces the roses in Saint Dorothea’s wreath.
It would appear, therefore, that the symbolism of the carnation is identical with that of the rose, and when, for any reason, the artist did not care to paint the rose, he substituted the carnation.
Each year thousands of carnation blossoms are brought to the Lateran Church in Rome on the feast-day of Saint John, and the people bring carnations, not roses, because by midsummer’s day the blooming time of Roman roses is almost past. A scarcity of roses would seem one reason at least in the Venetian pictures of the fifteenth century why the carnation replaces the rose. Earth, even sufficient to grow a rose bush, was scarce in the sea-washed city, but carnations then, as now, must have grown in pots on every balcony. So the Venetians painted their own familiar flower rather than draw the rose, as Carpaccio did his camels, from descriptions furnished by observant travellers.
In the Netherlands and Germany artists probably preferred the carnation to the rose. It is more precise in shape, neater in its habit of growth, richer in colour than the rose, andtherefore more in the spirit of Northern art, which liked to express definite and closely-reasoned symbolism with distinct bright colours and sharply-realized form. In the South, the artists, more concerned with the depicting of the soul than with the outer shell of things, more poetical and also more vague and less accurate in their symbolism, were better pleased with the more elusive charms of the loosely-petalled rose.
In an ‘Adoration’ by Botticelli73the Holy Child lies among violets, daisies and wild strawberries, and the background is filled with freely-growing roses, drawn apparently from memory, not life. The roses signify the divine love which impelled the Saviour of the world to be born as a human Child. In the same subject by Hugo van der Goes74three carefully-painted carnations are placed in a crystal vase, and are symbols of the divine love of the Holy Trinity by which God the Son became incarnate, the crystal vase in Northern art typifying the Immaculate Conception.
But in the Sienese and Florentine schoolsalso the carnation is sometimes found, and very rarely in the same picture as the rose.75Therefore it would seem conclusive that when the painter of the Church did not care to use the rose because, probably, of its association with Venus and scenes profane, he was free, if he chose, to use the carnation as its substitute.
Strangely enough, the most famous carnations in the history of art, those two which have given the name of ‘The Master with the Carnations’ to the anonymous Swiss painter of the fifteenth century, seem to have no symbolical significance. The picture76shows Saint John the Baptist preaching to King Herod from the text: ‘It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.’ The King is in his chair of state and the ladies of his court are seated upon cushions on the tesselated pavement before the pulpit. Directly below the pulpit lie the two pinks; one is white and one red. Possibly, since roses, according to Saint Melitus,77WalafridStrabo78and Saint Mectilda,79are the symbols of martyrdom, the carnation may foreshadow the approaching death of the preacher, but they are more probably simply a detail to give verisimilitude to the composition, as is the dog that worries a bone in the ‘Dance of Salome’ by the same master.