This scene, too, belongs to Italian art, and usually makes a beautiful processional group. Saint John, with the privilege of a son, walks before the bier. Duccio di Buoninsegna[166] paints him with the closed narrow palm of a martyr. In the charming little long-shaped picture by Fra Angelico[167] the palm has its fan-shaped leaves spread wide and it shines as if it were of gold. In the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of the Spanish school one of the attendant _putti_ usually carries a palm. This may be the palm of victory over sin and death, or, following another authority, it may be a symbol of the Immaculate Conception, since it bears fruit at the same moment at which it flowers.[168] According to Dr Anselm Salzer, O.S.B., ‘The palm, when referring to Mary, is a figure of her victory over the world and its temptations, of her everlasting virtue, of her sovereignty in heaven, of the protection that she offers to mankind, of her triumphant motherhood and of the beauty of her soul.’[169] XII THE ACANTHUS One plant, the acanthus, which was very much used by pre-Renaissance artists, seems to have dropped later from the flora of symbolism. [Illustration: _Photo Alinari_ THE ACANTHUS OF PARADISE Mosaic of 13th century (S. Clemente, Rome)] Paradise was embowered, according to Saint Paulino da Nola, in _floriferi caeleste nemus paradisi_, and curving branches of acanthus indicate Heaven in the mosaics of the Baptistery of Ravenna and in the apse of St John Lateran. The Trees of Jesse and the Trees of Life in early art are also founded on the acanthus with various symbolical details niched in the branches. It surrounds the ‘Coronation’ and fills the space above the heads of the saints in the large central mosaic of S. Maria Maggiore[170] and of the fine mosaic in S. Clemente.[171] Venturi writes of the latter: ‘From the plant, whence rises the Cross, spring two green boughs which wreath over all the abside, enclosing with their spirals birds, flowers and saints to give the idea of the garden of felicity. In such a way, in the _Dugento_, at the distance of so many centuries, the verses of St Paulino da Nola are illustrated once more.’ But after the thirteenth century acanthus plants of vast proportions were no longer used to symbolize the gardens of Heaven. Heaven became a natural park-like place with fruit trees and flower-grown grass, except for its inhabitants, differing little from any princely garden. The plant was still used as the motive of much decoration, ecclesiastical and secular, but it was no longer seen in connection with devotional subjects as the representative plant of Heaven. XIII THE FLEUR-DE-LYS