The Trees of Eden in Medieval Iconography

Abstract

Early Christian traditions of illustrating the story of the Garden of Eden have been largely reconstructed from their surviving medieval derivatives. The Tree of Life is depicted in the common Near Eastern tradition, symmetrically flanked by beasts and birds, on the eighth-century Lombardic relief in the cathedral at Cividale. In a masterly study, St Paul Underwood showed the complex role of the architectural model in the iconography of the baptismal Fountain of Life, which developed separately from images of the Tree of Life, although many Eastern representations of the fons vitae retain the two small flanking trees associated with the lignum vitae. The concept of the antithetical relationship of the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and of their inextricable connection within the divinely ordered plan of salvation, was familiar from exegesis, liturgy and the Holy Cross hymns.