Sometimes the ‘rose’ was a whole rose bush about two feet high and covered with leaves and flowers. Two such bushes, one thornless, the gift of Pope Alexander VII, and the other, with long sharp thorns, though curved harmlessly downward, presented by Pius II, are still treasured by grateful Siena. VIII THE COLUMBINE We read in Isaiah: ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.’[102] ‘These words were addressed to the Messiah. The Divine Child was therefore clothed with the Spirit of God, whose faculties are seven in number, for He possesses as His peculiar gifts, wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, piety and fear. ‘This subject has frequently been portrayed by Christian artists. A tree springs from the bowels, the breast or the mouth of Jesse. The symbolic trunk spreads to the left and right, throwing forth branches bearing the Kings of Judah, the ancestors of Christ; at the top, seated on a throne, or the chalice of a gigantic flower, is the Son of God. Surrounding the Saviour, and forming as it were an oval aureole, seven doves are ranged one above the other, three on the left, three on the right, and one at the top.... These doves, which are of snowy whiteness, like the Holy Ghost, and adorned like him with a cruciform nimbus, are simply living manifestations of the seven gifts of the Spirit. The Holy Ghost is drawn under the form of a dove; each of the seven energies distinguishing Him is also figured under the same type.’[103] These little doves surrounding the figure of Christ, as a man or as an infant, occur very frequently in the French miniatures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and are found upon the windows in the cathedrals of S. Denis, Chartres, Amiens and Beauvais, and in many other French churches. It was an essentially French development of Christian symbolism, and it is in Flemish art, which drew its inspiration from the French Renaissance, that we first find, not the little white doves, but the columbine flower. The columbine grows wild in most countries of Europe and is usually dark blue in colour. Each of its five petals is so shaped that it is really very like a little long-necked dove. The little doves are only five in number, but the Flemish painters take each flower, not each petal, as the symbol, and give seven blooms upon each plant. There are six, and the edge of the seventh is just showing, in the mystical crown worn by Hubert van Eyck’s ‘Queen of Heaven.’[104]