Apples and Pears, as Symbols of Fall and Redemption in Sacred Art; and Mary as the Tree of Life that Bears the Sweet Pear

Madonna and Child with Half Eaten Pear by Albrecht Dürer

“Apples and pears, Up the stairs” (Traditional English nursery rhyme)

This painting, dated 1512, is influenced by the Renaissance style of Italy but was painted by the German artist Albrecht Dürer. It shows Mary and Christ, each regarding the other with a touchingly loving gaze, and Christ holding a half-eaten pear.

In Western iconography, the pear is a sweet fruit, and because of its sweetness, it is often associated with the fruit of the Tree of Life. This fruit, which our first parents, Adam and Eve, never ate, contains the promise of eternal life. Church Fathers, such as Ephraim the Syrian, speculated that Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden to protect them from the temptation of doing so, so that they could not live forever in a fallen state.

The pear can be contrasted with the apple, which is traditionally used to represent the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The apple is not mentioned in Scripture, but it became associated with the Fall because, in Latin, the word for apple is malum, which is phonetically close to malus, meaning "evil."

Here is a 16th-century German painting of the Temptation of Adam and Eve:

This works beautifully, in my opinion, when paired with the Dürer. It is dark and sombre in mood, lacking in color, and the forms are difficult to distinguish in the tenebrous haze of the effects of sin. Even the garden is uniformly brown and shadowy, stripped of any hint of divine glory. The Dürer, on the other hand, is brightly colored and clear, with the figures shining with light. The contrast between light and dark is visually heightened by the rich black background, an effect achieved through multiple glazes of thin paint.

As Christians are now given the privilege denied to our first parents, until after Christ retrieved them from Hades after the Crucifixion. We are now all offered the choice to enter an Eden that is raised in glory to a level greater than that of the pre-lapsarian paradise. And we can choose to eat the fruit that promises eternal life, which is Christ himself, present in the Eucharist.

Hymns from Orthros (morning prayer), Byzantine liturgy (Canons for Tone VI on Sunday), express these sentiments and connect Mary, the Theotokos, to the economy of redemption directly:

Canon of the Resurrection:

Deceived in Eden into eating of the tree, our progenitor fell into corruption, disobeying Thy commandment, O all-good Lord; yet, obedient to the Father, O Savior, by the Cross Thou didst restore him again to his original beauty.

To the Theotokos:

Through thee, O most holy one, hath grace blossomed forth and the law ceased its effect; for thou, O pure Ever-virgin, gavest birth to the Lord Who granteth us remission.

Tasting of the tree showed me forth as mortal, but the Tree of Life, Who revealed Himself through thee, O all-pure one, raised up the dead and hath made me an heir to the sweetness of paradise.

Depictions of the Tree of Jesse cover a dual symbolism. Firstly, it demonstrates that Christ is connected to Adam through Jesse and, crucially in the line of King David. The genealogy, from Adam to Christ, is described in three sets of 14 generations in the Gospel of Matthew to establish this connection. The number 14 is associated with King David in the Gospel of Matthew (1:1-17) due to the numerical value of his name in Hebrew ‘gematria’. Gematria is a Jewish numerological system in which Hebrew letters are assigned numerical values, and words or phrases with equal totals are considered to have a mystical or interpretive connection. In this 12th-century English illumination of the Tree of Jesse by an anonymous artist, we see the line from Jesse, David’s Father, to Christ represented by a single figure, Mary. Mary represents in this context can also be considered the figure from which the Tree of Life, who Christ is according to the hymn above and the fruit - the ‘sweet pear’ - of which is also Christ present in the Eucharist.

I have also seen other commentaries in which Mary is likened to the Tree of Life, which bears the sweet fruit, who is Christ.