The Red Rose

The Red Rose, watercolour on paper, 12.7 x 17.78 cm

An excerpt from Umberto Eco’s Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages page 59 originally from Edgar de Bruyne’s Etudes d’esthetique medievale (Bruges, 1946)Vol. II page 338:

Every creature of this earth is like a picture or a book: it is a mirror of ourselves. It is a faithful mark of our life and of our death, of our state and of our fate. The rose is a picture, a fitting image of our state, a lesson on our life; for it flowers in early morning, and the fading flower flowers in the evening of age.