Student Scholarship

Document Type

Research Paper

Abstract

Amongst the chaos of war, plague, and death of the Middle Ages in France, there remained a seemingly untouched class of people: the nobility. These courtesans, although living in the lap of luxury, were not exempt from the anxieties of the time. The Hundred Years’ War left France in a constant state of unrest between the 1300s and 1400s, causing the elite to fall in and out of favor continuously. The price of luxury, it seemed, changed with each political shift. When studying the art made by and for these aristocrats, it becomes apparent that there are veiled indications of these tensions hidden throughout the iconography and subject matter of these works. Medieval tapestries from this time period are an excellent example of this, especially millefleurs tapestries. Although these textiles may seem to be straightforward narratives, they truly reveal the changing role of the court in the overall political landscape of the time, giving tapestry an even greater importance in the art historical conversation of this time period.

Publication Date

Summer 7-2021

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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