XXIITHE POMEGRANATE
Neri di Bicci,335Fra Angelico,336Filippo Lippi337and other artists of the fifteenth century painted the Infant Saviour with a pomegranate in His hand.
On the wall of the Bargello,338in the Chapel of the Podestà, is a frescoed Paradise, which contains a figure long believed to be a portrait of Dante by Giotto. He is seen in profile, wearing the characteristic hood, and holds in his hand a small branch on which are two ripe pomegranates. The fresco is not now considered to be by Giotto, nor the portrait contemporaneous, but that would not materially affect the meaning of the pomegranates, if they be a symbol, since the painting dates from the last half of the fourteenth century.
Were it not for Dante’s pomegranate therewould 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.
BotticelliPhoto BrogiTHE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS WITH LILIES AND ROSE-GARLANDS(Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
BotticelliPhoto BrogiTHE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS WITH LILIES AND ROSE-GARLANDS(Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
Botticelli
Photo Brogi
THE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS WITH LILIES AND ROSE-GARLANDS
(Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
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 wholehidden region, which Dante visited.... Botticelli putting it into the childish hands of Him, who, if men went down into hell, is there also.’
So, as the symbol of the life on the other side of death, the pomegranate is exceedingly well placed when given to the writer of theDivina Commedia, and it is even more appropriate in the hand of the incarnate Godhead—He who holds our future destinies in the hollow of His palm.
But it is difficult to ascertain if this was really the thought in the minds of the Florentine artists.
Mrs Jameson considers the pomegranate to be the symbol of immortality, or, showing the seeds, of hope in eternity.
But it would scarcely be the symbol of immortality in the Infant Saviour’s hand, since the symbol so placed is never His exclusive attribute, but the indication of some relationship with humanity. But showing the seeds—and the seeds are usually shown—it might be the symbol of a hope in eternity which He gives to man, the parallel lying in the unexpected sweetness of the fruit within the hard rind.
But possibly the authority followed by the masters of the ‘Quattrocento,’ or by those churchmen who gave them their commissions, was Gregory the Great, for he says: ‘The pomegranate is the emblem of congregations because of its many seeds: also emblem of the Christian Church because of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the same fruit.
Following this interpretation, the pomegranate, when carried by Dante or any other being of mortal birth, would indicate his faith in the Holy Catholic Church.
In Northern art the pomegranate is very rare. The Flemish artists ignore it, and those few German artists who paint it are those who had come under Italian influence. And it does not seem entirely clear whether those German artists who, like Hans Burgkmair,339paint it in the Infant Christ’s hand, give to the Southern fruit the Southern significance, or if for them it becomes the fruit of Eden in the hand of the second Adam.
In scenes representing different events in the life of Christ, trees of pomegranates areoccasionally introduced. Giovanni di Paolo sets the ‘Nativity’340in an orchard of pomegranates, and in a Florentine picture of the fourteenth century341the newly-risen Christ is surrounded by palms, pomegranates and flowers. These pomegranates, however, do not seem to be used attributively but merely to give some slight geographical indication. Bethlehem was an Eastern city; the tomb of Christ was in an Eastern garden.
The pomegranate is also, theoretically, the emblem of the Virgin. ‘In the symbolism of the cult of Mary, the ripe pomegranate, because of its pleasant fragrance and its numerous seeds, represents her beauty and many virtues, but the gradually-developing fruit refers to her life.’342
‘The pomegranate with its crowned top is her as queen, and typifies also hope and fruitfulness, the “Virginitas fecunda” of the octave of Christmas.’343
Jeremy Taylor, in a beautiful passage, describes Mary as the pomegranate tree and Christ as the fruit.
‘When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the nations was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the world, she brought forth theHoly Jesus, who, like light through a transparent glass, past through, or a ripe pomegranate from a fruitful tree, fell to the earth, without doing violence to its nurse and parent.’
In art, however, the pomegranate is very seldom used as the attribute of the Virgin. Occasionally the Florentine masters ornament the Virgin’s throne with knobs which more or less resemble the fruit, and Flemish artists, Memling in particular, place behind her a brocaded panel of the well-known pomegranate design. But these pomegranate knobs were a very usual detail in carved work, and the pomegranate pattern, which still persists, was a standard design of the silk-weavers of France and Italy.
The fruit itself is not used by the older masters. Even Crivelli, who lavishes fruit ofalmost every sort upon his slender, long-figured Madonnas, leaves the pomegranate aside.
In modern work, Podesti, in his vast fresco of the Immaculate Conception,344has placed a large single pomegranate upon a book arranged prominently in the foreground. It is the symbol, apparently, of the fruitfulness of the Virgin.
The ancient Jews ornamented their temple with the pomegranate, and their high priest’s robes were bordered with alternate bells and pomegranates. In the Christian Church, too, they have been admitted as decoration, though not with any very clear and definite symbolical significance. There is a very handsome seventeenth-century altar-rail of marble on which rest candlesticks and huge brass pomegranates before the high altar in the ancient church of S. Cecilia in Rome; and a great bronze pomegranate, worn by much caressing, is on the balustrade in the tiny chapel which was once the bathroom of the saint.