As the symbol of perfect righteousness, in Italy it is chiefly used in ‘Adorations,’ where the Infant Christ is laid upon the ground among the grass. Botticelli seems to have been the first to have placed it among the violets and daisies, but he had many followers, and a very charming picture, with the little scarlet berries in the foreground, is the ‘Adoration’ by Perugino, now in Munich. Botticelli may, however, have borrowed the symbol from Giovanni di Paolo,[347] who painted a small minutely-finished picture of the Virgin, seated on a cushion, with the Holy Child in her arms. Behind are fruit trees and strawberries, violets and carnations are at her feet, and since it was usual in Siena, in pictures where the Infant Saviour appears, to refer all symbols to Him, they are His attributes. In German art of the fifteenth century, on the other hand, the symbolical plants, including the strawberry, which appears in the mystical ‘Enclosed Gardens,’ express the virtues of Mary. The symbolical strawberry is almost invariably accompanied by the violet, from which we may gather that the truly fruitful soul is always humble. XXIV FRUIT IN GARLANDS Fruit in general signifies ‘the fruits of the Spirit--joy, peace and love.’ And therefore the painters of Northern Italy wove peach and plum, apples and grapes into heavy garlands, which they looped above the place where the Holy Child sat enthroned upon His mother’s knee, or they laid fresh, ripe fruit upon the step where the Virgin’s feet were resting. The wreath of fruit, when festooned behind or below a saint, was more particularly a symbol of the good works of the righteous; when looped above his head, it is a festal wreath equalling the victor’s crown. Such a wreath is that of mingled fruit and flowers above the head of Mantegna’s ‘Triumphant Saint George.’[348] But the fruit in many of the devotional pictures of the earlier Venetian masters would seem, like the rose gardens of Florence, to be partly votive. They wished to give of their best, and the cool fruit which came in high-piled boats to the gardenless city among the lagoons seemed infinitely precious to them--more precious, for they were a practical race of traders, than the fragile blossoms of ephemeral flowers. Besides, except for pinks, which, judging from various pictures, grew then as now in pots along the balconies, flowers to serve as models were rare in Venice.