The floral symbolism of the great masters - The Knowledge Den

12 FLORAL SYMBOLISM
occupied the religious painter ever since, the
painting of a soul's quality, the making visible
to the world of the beauty of holiness.
During the great century of art, achievement
came. Raphael, Leonardo, Michael Angelo,
Perugino required and used no symbol to ex-
press the majesty of Christ or the purity of the
Virgin Mother. They had that power to make
visible the intangible which, in art, is genius.
But among the earlier artists of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, he who was unable
to show by the announcing angel's attitude
and mien that his message was one of peace and
goodwill, placed a branch of olive in his hand,
and he who despaired of adequately depicting
the immaculate purity of the Virgin, empha-
sized his point by setting a pot of spotless lilies
by her side. So was the intention of the least-
accomplished of artists made clear, even to
the unlettered.
After the first effervescence of the Renais-
sance had died down, the laws of sacred art
became once more fixed, though never again
(except in Spain beneath the Inquisition) with
the strictness of the Byzantine school. Art