• The red and white of the appleblossoms is symbolical of the blood and water which flowed from the wound in Christ’s side. At least so thinks Vellutelli. Ruskin, Modern Painters , III 226, says:⁠— “Some three arrow-flights farther up into the wood we come to a tall tree, which is at first barren, but, after some little time, visibly opens into flowers, of a color ‘less than that of roses, but more than that of violets.’ It certainly would not be possible, in words, to come nearer to the definition of the exact hue which Dante meant⁠—that of the appleblossom. Had he employed any simple colorphrase, as a ‘pale pink,’ or ‘violet pink,’ or any other such combined expression, he still could not have completely got at the delicacy of the hue; he might perhaps have indicated its kind, but not its tenderness; but by taking the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, and then enfeebling this with the violet gray, he gets, as closely as language can carry him, to the complete rendering of the vision, though it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect beauty ineffable; and rightly so felt, for of all lovely things which grace the springtime in our fair temperate zone, I am not sure but this blossoming of the apple-tree is the fairest.” ↩