Early Christian art used symbolic and allegorical images mainly, partly no doubt to avoid drawing attention during the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire.

"It was the allegorical image I wanted."

Because comments in the philatelic press were negative about the two pictorial stamps, the Postal Services Department proposed to replace the pictures with two new allegorical images.

A winged female allegorical image of Fame (or of Hope) carries to glory a dying French hero, his broken sword a sign of defeat.

Favoured subjects are court portraiture, and allegorical images of death, decay and the transience of life, usually handled with the blackest of black humour.

He is noted for the many allegorical images he created from classical mythology and the Bible.

What is not apparent at a glance, however, is that they were intended as allegorical as well as realistic images.

He appropriates the allegorical image as symbolic representation of universal conceptions of the world (be it mythological or religious).

The spectre of human suffering he saw around him led him to transform immediate facts into allegorical, symbolic and occasionally even didactic images.

The Flemish artist Hans Eworth produced a portrait of him in 1550, noted for its use of allegorical images.