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Mary appears in her usual colours, blue and red. Her attributes are illustrated by the flowers richly carpeting the foreground (lilies and lilies of the valley = purity; rose = illumination; violets = modesty and humility) . These flowers, which were also used for medicinal purposes, frequently became connected with the person of the Madonna. In a fourteenth-century poem from the Netherlands, surviving in manuscript form, twelve different flowers refer to Mary, eight of which can be found in this painting.
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