And the majority of artists have chosen that fruit. It grew in every part of Europe, and, except the cherry, it was almost the only cultivated fruit in Germany and the Netherlands. Besides grapes, figs and pomegranates it is the only fruit mentioned in Scripture, and it is also possible that some found reason for identifying it with the fruit which brought sin into the world in the apparent similarity of the two Latin words, ‘mălum’ = evil, and ‘mālum’ = an apple.

And as the fruit varies in the hand of Adam so it varies in the hand of the Infant Christ, the second Adam. Memling and the painters of Cologne depict Him with an apple. Il Moretto paints a pear,304 Giovanni Bellini a quince,305 and Botticelli a pomegranate.306 The Eve of Jan van Eyck holds a lemon,307 but he keeps to the older convention in the symbols which he places in the hand of the Infant Saviour: the bird, emblem of the human soul, the inscribed scroll or the cross-surmounted orb.

The apple, when in the hand of Adam, is always the symbol of the Fall; when in the hand of Christ, it is the symbol of the sin of the world which He took upon Himself. ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’

But in the early instances of a fruit in the Christ-Child’s hand it does not appear to be definitely the death-giving apple of Eden. It is fruit of Paradise, a delight promised to the blessed which the King of Heaven brings down with Him to earth.

In the early school of Siena, as we have already seen, the little Christ was still the Royal Infant, still ‘trailing clouds of glory,’ untouched by shadow of suffering, and usually bearing in His hand some indication of His high estate. Often His hand was raised in blessing, sometimes He held a lily of Paradise.

On an early fourteenth-century panel in the manner of the Lorenzetti, in Siena Academy, the Child holds a fruit, but it is not clearly defined. In one of Sano di Pietro’s most attractive works,308 however, which is dated 1444, the Child, seated on the Virgin’s knee, holds a golden orange with its foliage. To His right and left are saints, and close around there are six angels crowned with blue corn-flowers and carrying roses and lilies. No attempt is made to realize earthly conditions; the glowing scene is set in Heaven, and the little Lord of Heaven holds in His hand a celestial fruit, just one of such fruits as hang upon the trees in Giovanni di Paolo’s ‘Paradise.’309

In another picture by Sano di Pietro,310 the Child (perhaps the most charming ‘Bambino’ ever painted in Siena) holds in His hand a bunch of cherries.

Cherries, painted more than once within the tiny hand by Sano di Pietro, are always taken as the delicious fruit. Like the lilies of the earlier Paradises they typify the delights of the blessed, and in German art particularly they are painted often as the peculiar fruit of Heaven. They are never taken as the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and therefore, at least in the early Sienese school, this fruit held by the Infant Christ would seem to be the fruit of Paradise.

In Northern art, in the work of the French ivory cutters, and particularly in the work of Memling and of those artists influenced by him, the apple takes precedence of all other symbols in the Christ-Child’s hand. Northern theologians, studying the Old Testament carefully, and deeply interested in types and anti-types, saw in Adam the type of Christ. The Biblia Pauperum, originally designed with the intention of teaching the faith to the unlettered, served as a pattern-book for stained glass and other ecclesiastical decoration from the ninth century onwards. Each page is divided into three sections. In the centre is a scene from the life of Christ; in the sections on either side is a scene from Old Testament History, showing some incident in the lives of those men who are considered to be types of Christ, which foreshadowed some act of the Redeemer. And chief of these types is Adam. Therefore in the Northern Church the idea of Jesus Christ as the second Adam was familiar, and the fruit in His hand was perfectly understood as a symbol. Memling, who, if he did not originate the symbolism of the apple of Eden, made it famous by constant repetition on his magnificently executed panels, usually treats it quite simply. The apple is the symbol of the Fall, and therefore of the world’s sin, which Christ accepts as His own. In the fine example at Chatsworth, the Infant Christ, with one hand pointing to the book of prophecy, takes with the other the apple held by an attendant angel. But one painting by Memling311 is especially interesting, since it links together the two symbols, the fruit of heavenly bliss and the fruit of Man’s redemption. The Child sits upon His mother’s knee, and in one hand clutches cherries, the fruit of Paradise. He seems, however, on the point of relinquishing them to take the apple from the angel’s hand, as He relinquished heavenly joy to take upon Himself the sin of the world.

Meanwhile the painters of Florence, Fra Angelico, Neri di Bicci, Filippo Lippi and Botticelli, had painted the Child with the pomegranate, and it is not very clear whether they held to the Sienese symbolism or sympathized with the Northern tradition. But it was probably the fruit of Eden, for in all other points the Florentines had broken with the Byzantine conventions, and the Child was for them no longer the Royal Child, richly clothed and dignified in gesture, but He was a little naked human baby, born into the world to repair, as the second Adam, the old Adam’s fault. That He is the Saviour, rather than the King, is particularly emphasized by Botticelli, who seldom fails, even though it be only by the foreboding in the grey eyes of the angels, to give some hint of the coming tragedy.

On the other hand it may be possible that the painters of Florence in the fifteenth century had harked back to another source for their symbolism and had taken the imagery of Saint Gregory the Great, who used the pomegranate as the emblem of the Christian Church ‘because of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the same fruit.’ But in later Italian art, as in all the Northern countries and in modern Church symbolism, the fruit, most usually the apple, which is in the hand of the Infant Christ, is the fruit of redemption, as the apple of Adam was the fruit of damnation.

Following the same analogy, the Virgin is regarded as the second Eve, the second universal mother, who, through her Son, is to repair the fault of the first.

The symbolists of the thirteenth century found what they considered proof of this in the word of Scripture.

Conrad von Würztburg writes:

Therefore the apple, which masters of the Flemish and early German schools sometimes introduced into Annunciations, laying it, for instance, upon the window-sill, is the apple of redemption.

The apple in the hand of Eve is always the apple of damnation. There is a curious drawing by Martin Schöngauer of the ‘Descent into Hell.’ Adam and Eve come forth first of the released souls, Eve holding the apple, which has the marks of her teeth still upon it.

In the hand of Mary it is again the apple of redemption, but it is the fruit of the Fall when it is between the jaws of the serpent or dragon, which she, at her Assumption, treads under foot.

In Italian art the apple is less often found in the Madonna pictures, but the ancient analogy was not forgotten. On the predella of Lorenzo di Credi’s ‘Annunciation’313 there are three exquisite little scenes from the life of Eve, and Vasari introduces the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil into his ‘Conception of the Virgin,’ painted in 1540. Vasari describes it himself:

‘The Tree of the Original Sin was represented in the centre of the painting, and at the roots thereof were placed nude figures of Adam and Eve bound, as being the first transgressors of God’s commands. To the principal branches there were also bound Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David and the rest of the kings, law-givers, etc., according to their seniority, all fastened by both arms, excepting only Samuel and Saint John the Baptist, who are bound by one arm only, to intimate that they were sanctified before their birth. At the trunk of the tree, and with the lower part turning around it, is the Old Serpent, but the upper part of the form has the shape of Man, and the hands are confined behind the back; on his head is one foot of the glorious Virgin, which is trampling down the horns of the demon, while the other foot is fixed on a moon. Our Lady is clothed with the sun and crowned with twelve stars, being sustained in the air within a splendour of numerous angels, nude, and illuminated by the rays which proceed from the Madonna herself. These same rays, moreover, passing amidst the foliage of the tree, give light to the figures bound to the branches; nay, they seem to be gradually loosening their bonds, by the power and grace which they derive from her out of whom they proceed. In Heaven, meanwhile, that is, at the highest point of the picture, are two children bearing a scroll, on which are the following words:

‘“Quos Eva culpa damnavit, Mariæ gratia solvit.”’314

It was thus that Vasari united in one picture the two universal mothers, the physical and the spiritual, and his allegory was typical of the mysticism of his day, for he tells us that, being doubtful as to the due treatment of the subject, he and his patron, Messer Bindo, ‘took counsel with such of our common friends as were men of letters,’ and Vasari’s friends included the fine flower of Italian intellect.

The picture, which is a good deal darkened by time, and less interesting than the description leads one to expect, is still in its original place in the Church of SS. Apostoli in Florence.

In some pictures, particularly those showing the influence of Memling, an attendant angel holds the apple, holding it ready till the time shall come when the Infant Saviour, with growing consciousness of His mission, holds forth His hand to take it.

But there are various ‘Holy Families’315 of the early German school in which Saint Anne sits holding the apple. It seems strange that she should, but it is to be remembered that in German popular religion and in German art Saint Anne holds an important place. Altars were often dedicated to her, and the holy family might, in a manner, be called her attribute. Frequently Saint Anne and the Virgin are depicted seated on one seat, apparently with equal possessive rights over the Holy Child, who stands between them. There is also that strange allegorical conception usually styled ‘Mutter Anna selb-dritt,’ where Saint Anne sits with the Infant Christ on one knee and the Child-Virgin on the other. She was the Virgin’s nearest blood-relation, and if the Virgin was without sin, it was Anne, born in sin but the Mother of His Mother, who most nearly connected the incarnate Godhead with the erring human race. It was perhaps fitting, therefore, that she, representing sinful humanity, should offer to the Saviour the fruit of the Fall, which in His hand would become the fruit of Redemption. At other times it is Mary who holds the fruit, but offering it to the Saviour, who raises His hand to take it. She, as the second Eve, places in His hand the apple by which mankind is to be redeemed, not lost, since she, by giving Him a human body, had made that redemption possible.

In the Corsini Gallery316 there is a picture, attributed to Hugo van der Goes, in which Mother and Child hold each a fruit. At first sight it seems as if it were a presentment in one picture of Christ as the second Adam, and Mary as the second Eve, with a doubling of the symbolism of the apple which would be illogical. But the fruit held by Mary is distinctly a pear, that held by Christ apparently an apple. The artist has, therefore, discriminated between the apple of damnation and the sweeter, mellower fruit, which may be the symbol of Redemption, for the Holy Child seems to be in the act of exchanging one for the other.

This may possibly also explain the thought in the mind of the French ivory-cutters of the fourteenth century, for they, too, not infrequently, placed a small round fruit resembling an apple in the hand of the Infant Christ and a larger pear-shaped fruit in that of His mother, though they give little indication of any action of exchange.

Northern art, though realistic, was very placid, and, except in scenes from the Passion, quite unmarked by the sometimes painful pathos of the Italian and Spanish schools. In the Madonna pictures the only faint reminder of the tragedy for which the Child was born into the world is the rosy-cheeked apple in the tiny hand. The mother is satisfied and untroubled, the Child smiling happily, and an apple is a natural, pleasant thing to place within a baby’s hand. Rubens painted a delightful ‘Holy Family beneath an Apple Tree’317—a little scene of idyllic happiness; and scarcely noticeable is the pathetic suggestion of the branch of apples which Zacharias holds towards the little Christ.

The shifting of theological and artistic standpoints at the Reformation in no way disturbed the Northern love of Old Testament analogies or the affection for this particular symbol, and in Germany one of its most charming developments was the Christmas tree, the evergreen tree laden with golden and silver apples, set up in every home to commemorate the birth of Christ. It is the Tree of Eden, which Christ by His birth and death transmuted into a tree of Paradise.

The apple is the most usual fruit in the hand of the Infant Christ, but some Flemish painters of the early sixteenth century give Him grapes instead. The grapes symbolize the divine blood by which souls lost through Adam’s fall are redeemed. Gerard David318 puts a cluster of white grapes in the tiny hand; Lucas van Leyden319 white grapes also with leaves and tendrils; and in another picture Lucas van Leyden320 places the apple and the grapes together upon the broad ledge in the foreground. In this last there is the same idea of exchange which is found more clearly expressed in the picture by Mabuse at Berlin.

This substitution of the fruit of the vine for the apple of Eden seems only to be found in the Netherlands. In a very beautiful picture by Botticelli, the grapes held by the angel have a simpler meaning. They, with the corn, are the direct emblems of the body and the blood of the Saviour, and foretell the coming sacrifice of His death; the symbolism is identical with that of the embroidered vine-leaves and wheat-ears of so many modern altar frontals.321

Very often, as upon the façade of Orvieto Cathedral, the fig-tree is taken as the Tree of Temptation, for, it might be argued, our first parents would take to make themselves garments the leaves of the tree nearest to their hand, the leaves of that same tree of whose fruit they had just eaten. ‘It is possible that the erotic significance which the fig had among the ancients was also considered in this connection,’322 and it is probably because of its classical associations that the fig was never placed in the hand of the Infant Saviour.

Except as the forbidden fruit the fig is not found in Italian or Flemish ecclesiastical art, but in Germany there appears to have been no prejudice against it. It is painted frequently in the Madonna pictures. A small fig-tree overshadows the cot of the Infant Christ in a picture by Matthias Grünewald;323 Hans Burgkmair324 paints it with the rose, the iris, the columbine and other attributes of the Virgin; Hans Holbein325 the Younger sets his Saint Ursula against a fig-tree; and it is the only growing thing introduced in his best-known work, the beautiful Madonna of the Bürgomeister Meyer.326

These fig-trees, unlike the barren fig-tree of Scripture, always bear fruit and appear to be the symbols of a holy life rich with the fruits of the Spirit.