Were it not for Dante’s pomegranate there would be no particular reason to think that the artists of the ‘Quattrocento’ meant more than simply to indicate some heavenly fruit when they placed the pomegranate in the hand of the Child Christ. In accordance with the Byzantine tradition to which Siena held, they regarded Him as the Royal Child come to earth with Heavenly gifts in His hand; they had not yet adopted the symbolism of the North, which saw in the Infant Christ the second Adam, holding the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, though indeed Botticelli, who almost always gives some indication of coming sorrow in Christ’s childhood, seems to have found some sad inner meaning in the symbol. But in Dante’s hand the fruit could not be the fruit of Paradise, and it may therefore have some further meaning even when held by the Infant Saviour. [Illustration: _Botticelli_ _Photo Brogi_ THE CHILD WITH THE POMEGRANATE SURROUNDED BY ANGELS WITH LILIES AND ROSE-GARLANDS (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)] Walter Pater writes: ‘The mystical fruit, which because of the multitude of its seeds was to the Romans a symbol of fecundity ... to the middle age became a symbol of the fruitful earth itself; and then of that other seed sown in the dark underworld; and at last of the whole hidden region, which Dante visited.... Botticelli putting it into the childish hands of Him, who, if men went down into hell, is there also.’ So, as the symbol of the life on the other side of death, the pomegranate is exceedingly well placed when given to the writer of the _Divina Commedia_, and it is even more appropriate in the hand of the incarnate Godhead--He who holds our future destinies in the hollow of His palm. But it is difficult to ascertain if this was really the thought in the minds of the Florentine artists. Mrs Jameson considers the pomegranate to be the symbol of immortality, or, showing the seeds, of hope in eternity. But it would scarcely be the symbol of immortality in the Infant Saviour’s hand, since the symbol so placed is never His exclusive attribute, but the indication of some relationship with humanity. But showing the seeds--and the seeds are usually shown--it might be the symbol of a hope in eternity which He gives to man, the parallel lying in the unexpected sweetness of the fruit within the hard rind. But possibly the authority followed by the masters of the ‘Quattrocento,’ or by those churchmen who gave them their commissions, was Gregory the Great, for he says: ‘The pomegranate is the emblem of congregations because of its many seeds: also emblem of the Christian Church because of the inner unity of countless seeds in one and the same fruit. Following this interpretation, the pomegranate, when carried by Dante or any other being of mortal birth, would indicate his faith in the Holy Catholic Church.