Millefleur means 'thousand flowers' in French. It refers to tiny flowers which were woven into the Flemish tapestries of the late medieval and Renaissance period of Europe.
The Faerie Queene and King Arthur (1788, PD) Henry Fuseli
For our mysteries in mysteries folks, this is meant to be Spenser's Gloriana.
Elizabeth I interestingly enough paid a great many of these weavers to make their works for her because of the treaty of Hampton Court (1562) being rescinded by Catherine d'Medici (1519-1589) which occurred during the siege of Havre in 1572. The treaty had been signed by Elizabeth I and Huguenot leader Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé in the 1560's.
Due to the internal politics of France, which at the time was under the rule of Catherine, political factions began to form such as the Huguenots which become politicial outliers during that time. Catherine made the situation into the mess it was seeing it as a personal attack on herself. Her imposition of the Catholic faith upon protestants in France and other territories she held power over lead to those skirmishes becoming what was known as the French wars of Religion (1562-1598). Catherine fancied herself an absolute monarch, whereas Elizabeth knew she served the public of England at the end of the day.
Thus, as a protestant herself, Elizabeth sided with the Huguenots whom she and her council regarded as persecuted under Catherine's anti-protestant purges and wars. In 1562, 3,000 English troops were asked by the French to occupy Le Havre, and Dieppe. Elizabeth took this as a sign to aid her allies and did what was requested of her, sending the men. When the frogs decided to get their act together and not bicker anymore, Elizabeth refused to withdraw on the grounds that she wanted to take back Calais, which in her predecessor Mary I's time, was British territory. Mary had famously lost it whilst ruling as Catholic on the throne of England. It was said when Mary would be cut open, on her heart would be written 'Calais' such was the political turmoil it caused for the realms at the time.
Returning to frogs, Catherine sent all the religions to attack Havre in 1563. After this time, Elizabeth would never trust the Huguenots again, and neither would Catherine, but the Protestants Burghers who funded the guilds that made the tapestries would continue to be patronised in support of Elizabeth's desire to see Protestantism flourish and Catholic powers diminish, a role her rake father also desired to see, but less so because he knew how to rule a country and more so because he wanted to bang more women without the Pope telling him who he could and couldn't have in his harem. Catherine on the other hand decided Catholicism was the way forward and caused what became known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, wherein 3000 protestants were killed, leading to many of them fleeing to England and bringing their specialist skills and Protestant beliefs with them. Elizabeth refused during the massacre to send more support abroad, but did indeed help the refugees of those situations who came to England.
Hortus Conclusi and Elizabeth
Elizabeth figured herself as an iconoclastic figure for particularly Elizabethan Catholics, such as was the foregone, excommunicated conclusion.
Therefore she sought to replace her image as that of a new kind of Madonna figure specifically. She may have read into the idea of Mary Magdalene as a figure of linking herself to wider mythological and religious importance, given both of their brand connections to purity and virginity as socially acceptable under the banner of religious acceptance.
This brings us to the metaphorical idea of Elizabeth as part of the Hortus Conclusus of the Elizabethan court, that is someone who would would seated in an enclosed garden in medieval portraiture and tapestries from around 1330. The term originating from the Latin: "Hortus conclusus soror mea, sponsa, hortus conclusus, fons signatus" ("A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.") As such, Mary in late medieval and Renaissance art, illustrating the long-held doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, as well as the Immaculate Conception, was shown in or near a walled garden or yard. This was a representation of her "closed off" womb, which was to remain untouched, and also of her being protected, as by a wall, from sin. In the Grimani Breviary, scrolling labels identify the emblematic objects betokening the Immaculate Conception: the enclosed garden (hortus conclusus), the tall cedar (cedrus exalta), the well of living waters (puteus aquarum viventium), the olive tree (oliva speciosa), the fountain in the garden (fons hortorum), the rosebush (plantatio rosae).
Richard II and Elizabeth as a lineage of portraiture
Richard II was the first English king to commission portraits of himself, but he was also regarded as a despot. These 2 things when taken together seem to be the opposite of what someone like Elizabeth would have wanted to evoke. When we consider however that Elizabethan patronage often was more about the politics of the time than of showing the immediate face and aesthetics of the Elizabethans, given that that was seen as a negative Catholic trait, we can begin to see how this might point us instead to more political motivations of Elizabeth's.
These included the notion of the royal prerogative, which saw Richard limit the power of the private mercenary armies of the English to become the single army which would be the Army of England. This saw a flocking of power to Richard, which specifically created new kinds of tie and patron systems during his reign. These became a high point for the concentrations of money and power, which lead to the establishment of new high forms of art. These measures were the ones Elizabeth aspired to, perhaps even courted to taunt the likes of Catherine, Philip and the Pope who saw her as a despotic bigot, so that she could concentrate power in ways which benefitted her and which consolidated her public image in the aftermath.
Thus it was sometimes not what was worn and displayed, but rather the political message behind the action which was more intriguing and would have to be 'read into' by the people at the time to elicit the true meaning of Elizabeth's actions and desires. Most often curated by the men she kept around her and the advisors she often worked with in her governments and machinations of statecraft.
They may also be a harkening to the courts and arts of the earlier Tudor periods, such as the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (1420's)
Millefleur tapestries
There is an interesting theory that the scale of the flowers and this inconsistency in size is related to the ideas of how the Elizabethans and Tudor patrons saw these items in regards to power and God. It is believed the sizes were not lifelike because by this point, allegory and story telling were influential in telling relations of the tales in the tapestries, especially given their scale and patronage only by wealthy individuals and elites. Rather instead the point of size differentiation was to read the difference in meaning between each of these points to reveal further information about what was going on.
If we look at the Paris/Flanders/Brussels schools for example, there consists of many of these tapestries 3 particular zones of pattern. The first being central zones of figures, islands of plants for example. The second top half of the background of vertical bands of patterning or animals. Thirdly the bottom half usually filled with rows of plants with gaps between. These patterns are seen in the The Hunt of the Unicorn set (c.1500) and The Lady and the Unicorn (also 1500).
These really interesting things might have something to do with one another but for now I prewrote this and I'm craving gelato so bai bai.
Elizabeth was creating a series of links to her patronage by having the power to wield influence in continuing her own legacy over that of other throne claimants. The gideon tapestries for example are a symbol of the wealth transfer for wall rugs Elizabeth could muster simply because she existed. Her court in this way did this, as they were following the cult of Gloriana, a mythical brand of queendom and purity believed only by a few, but enough to get a court going.
How is this relevant?
There are no extant tapestries of Elizabeth herself, so you may be asking how and why is this relevant. It is most likely I think so, because it gives us an idea of the political legacy and the tales the public tell about Elizabeth's reign, which we often forget legitimised a previously straught gender debate.
Thus it is not imperative that there is a tapestry, it is simply the legitimisation of the idea that Elizabeth had legitimacy and right to rule as she saw fit, and that her patronage and usurping as some would have seen it, was to be the way forward, as the rest around her had not the brain, stomach nor heart to do what she had done in becoming married to her country and leading in the style of branded iconography in statecraft as she did. Her hortus conclusus was her image as a virgin Empress, her control of the seas a tale spun to allow her to command armies and navy's abroad, her rule legitmised for a puny and weak country which was up against the Spanish Habsburg, specifically her hated cousin in law Philip 2.
Catherine her own contemporary, did not even recognise this as a legitimate rule or form of ruling, yet allowed Mary I to do so, even though at those times she was considered a 'barren woman'. Elizabeth sought her own path out of the chaos around her, leading to forming the new idea of Elizabeth as the Madonna, her image taken in the form of creating patronage around her court and the politics of the wider European stage and in legitimising the past mistakes of Henry VIII whilst forging ahead with the politics of state, rather than the immediate wants of her flesh and blood, mortal body.
Elizabeth was making sure she would live to 60, 70 or 80 after a childhood of severe turmoil, and did the same for her country. More than could be said for the likes of Empress Matilda or Catherine, who saw their countries as places where they had sole domain and could ravage. They know lie often in historical memory as footnotes, Elizabeth's image carries instead an air and myth of legitimacy to this day.
