The iris is sometimes used symbolically in Italy, and there is in the Church of S. Spirito in Florence an ‘Annunciation’ now usually ascribed to Pesello. Between Mary and the angel stands a vase from which spring three purple iris. This vase, on either side of which the figures bend, is not merely a variation of the vase of white lilies indicating the virginity of Mary which is seen in so many early Annunciations, but it is the same symbol developed and enriched, till it represents the dogma of the immaculate birth of Christ. The vase, in many cases transparent, typifies Mary, and the upspringing flower is the emblem of the incarnate Godhead.[47] Ghirlandaio places the iris, violet and daisy, each growing up strongly and freshly from the bare ground of the stableyard, in his ‘Adoration of the Shepherds,’[48] and in a picture of the sixteenth century by Palmezzano of Forlì,[49] the Child, seated on His Mother’s knee, holds a stem of iris as a sceptre; but, on the whole, the iris was little painted in Italy. In art which is purely German the iris is very rarely used, though Albert Dürer painted a ‘Madonna of the Sword-lily,’[50] but in Spain it holds an important place. Spanish art is poor in symbolism, though it recognized early and prized highly the white lilies of the Annunciation. Except, perhaps, for the flame-tipped dart of divine love, there seems to be no symbol of truly Spanish origin, and those used by Spanish artists were mostly taken from the art of the Netherlands. Flemish art was profoundly admired in Spain, and the Spanish were well acquainted with it, for there was naturally much intercourse between the two countries in the days before the Netherlands established their independence. Also Jan van Eyck visited Portugal and Spain in the train of his patron, Philip the Good of Burgundy, and from the Hispano-Mauresque types in some of the later work of the Master of Flémalle there is reason to think that he, too, had been in the peninsula.