The Millefleur Style: Floral Design with a History
Flowers are everywhere in art. As part of the natural world, as symbols, and even as an artist’s signature theme (think Van Gogh and his sunflowers). But with the millefleur style, flowers are literally everywhere. Annunciation, detail of flowers. Fra Angelico So, where did this style originate and what artists used it in their paintings? A Thousand Flowers The term millefleur means “a thousand flowers” in French, and it was originally applied to perfume made from a variety of flowers [1] . With time, it started being applied to the characteristic floral background on 15 th century Flemish and French tapestries, which features all kinds of flowers and leaves that cover all the surface between the figures. There’s a very similar term, millefiori , which derives from Italian and also means “a thousand flowers”. It refers to a glass-making technique, made famous by the glass-makers of Murano, Venice. The whole surface of the glass seems to be made of tiny multi-colored flowers....