Valois Tapestries
Scholars such as Frances Yates and Jean Coural have developed nuanced theories backed by solid evidence to identify these unknown contributors, and also the political meaning of the tapestries, but research has yet to confirm many of these findings.
[4][5] These works display surprisingly intimate and personal moments within the royal inner circle clashing against the busy backdrops of these lavish festivals.
[8] Some of the entertainments recorded in the tapestries can be identified with known events, such as the festivals mounted at Fontainebleau and at Bayonne during Charles IX's royal progress of 1564–65; and the ball held for the Polish ambassadors at the Tuileries in 1573.
Particularly lavish were the tournaments and fêtes held in 1565 in Bayonne, near the Spanish border of France, where Catherine de' Medici met with her daughter Elisabeth, Queen of Spain, amidst rituals of display from both courts.
The latest event identifiable in the tapestries was held in 1573 at the Tuileries, where Catherine laid on a ball for ambassadors from the Polish governing council, who had elected her son Henry as king of Poland.
[1]For Catherine de' Medici, who masterminded these occasions and may have ordered the tapestries that commemorated them, such entertainments were worth their colossal expense, since they served a political purpose.
At the same time, she believed these elaborate entertainments and sumptuous court rituals, which incorporated martial sports and tournaments of many kinds, would occupy her feuding nobles and distract them from fighting against each other to the detriment of the country and the royal authority.
It is likely that Catherine presented them to her granddaughter Christina of Lorraine, in celebration of her marriage to Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1589.
[40] In November 2018, six of the eight tapestries – Elephant, Fontainebleau, Journey, Polish Ambassadors, Tournament, and Whale – were displayed for the first time in North America at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
[38][40] In 2023, the eight tapestries are displayed in the same room in the Musée national de la Renaissance at Écouen (France) during an exhibition dedicated to Antoine Caron.
The reason Henry III and Catherine did not throw the full weight of France behind Anjou's campaign in the Netherlands was that they feared provoking a war with Spain.
[46] They interpret the inclusion of Turks alongside the Huguenots to indicate that both were regarded as "infidels", an association previously made in the Tunis tapestries for the Habsburg Philip II's marriage to Mary I of England.
They also maintain that the political message of those tapestries remained part of the Valois ethos, since the Triumph of Scipio was displayed during the summit meeting between the French and Spanish courts at Bayonne.
