Its first appearance as a religious symbol is in the work of the early Flemish masters, where it both accompanies and replaces the white lily as the flower of the Virgin. Roger van der Weyden[35] paints both flowers in a vase before the Virgin, and the iris alone in another picture[36] of Mary with the Holy Child. In his ‘Annunciation’[37] the vase holds only white lilies. There is iris growing among the roses in Jan van Eyck’s ‘Virgin of the Fountain,’[38] but in his Annunciations there is only the white lily. Memling, however, places an iris half hidden below the lilies in one Annunciation,[39] while in a ‘Madonna with the Child’[40] there is also a single iris, though in this case the iris rises above the lilies. The Master of Flémalle in his fine ‘Saint Barbara’[41] places an iris in a vase beside the saint, where the white lily of a virgin martyr might have been expected. The symbolism of the iris and the lily at first sight appears to be identical, and the substitution of the iris for the _lilium_ seems to be the result of some confusion between ‘lys’ and ‘fleur-de-lys,’ accentuated by the likeness between the iris and the lilies of the French royal standard with which the people of the Netherlands were familiar, since they were emblazoned on the shield of the Dukes of Burgundy. In the mosaics of Ravenna, where the lily is used to indicate the delights of Heaven, it is drawn in silhouette, showing three petals, and very closely resembles the ‘fleur-de-lys’ of heraldry. The same convention born of the extreme difficulty of giving modelled form in utter whiteness, particularly in a medium unfitted to express fine gradations of shade, is found in woven work, tooled leather, and embroidery, and the common likeness of the imperfectly-rendered _lilium candidum_ and the iris to the sacred lily of the French and English royal standards, is sufficient to account for any indecision as to which was precisely the Virgin’s lily. It is conceivable, too, that the artists of the Netherlands, when they painted a Madonna for their churches, set her in the midst of the iris which grew so thickly round their doors rather than limit her patronage to the white lily, which was still exotic and confined to some few convent gardens. For the iris made their Lady more entirely their own--and so she would appeal more strongly to the emotions of the simple.