On the other hand it may be possible that the painters of Florence in the fifteenth century had harked back to another source for their symbolism and had taken the imagery of Saint Gregory the Great, who used the pomegranate as the emblem of the Christian Church ‘because of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the same fruit.’ But in later Italian art, as in all the Northern countries and in modern Church symbolism, the fruit, most usually the apple, which is in the hand of the Infant Christ, is the fruit of redemption, as the apple of Adam was the fruit of damnation. Following the same analogy, the Virgin is regarded as the second Eve, the second universal mother, who, through her Son, is to repair the fault of the first. The symbolists of the thirteenth century found what they considered proof of this in the word of Scripture. Conrad von Würztburg writes: ‘Let a man take three letters: When these straightforward are read, The little word “Ave” stands out, The new word of salutation (or healing). Let him begin at the end, And read to the beginning, And “Eva” is found written. * * * * * That one may thereby know, It is thou who fulfillest, The old and the new Covenants. The greeting from the angel’s mouth Greeting thee, O royal spotless maid, Hath told me this.’[312] Therefore the apple, which masters of the Flemish and early German schools sometimes introduced into Annunciations, laying it, for instance, upon the window-sill, is the apple of redemption. The apple in the hand of Eve is always the apple of damnation. There is a curious drawing by Martin Schöngauer of the ‘Descent into Hell.’ Adam and Eve come forth first of the released souls, Eve holding the apple, which has the marks of her teeth still upon it. In the hand of Mary it is again the apple of redemption, but it is the fruit of the Fall when it is between the jaws of the serpent or dragon, which she, at her Assumption, treads under foot. [Illustration: _Martin Schöngauer_ ADAM AND EVE DELIVERED FROM HELL (Print Room, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)] In Italian art the apple is less often found in the Madonna pictures, but the ancient analogy was not forgotten. On the predella of Lorenzo di Credi’s ‘Annunciation’[313] there are three exquisite little scenes from the life of Eve, and Vasari introduces the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil into his ‘Conception of the Virgin,’ painted in 1540. Vasari describes it himself: