The Fleur-De-Lis, Faith, Wisdom and Valour

The heraldic fleur-de-lis, emblem of the French monarchy and of much else, is generally taken to be a stylised iris rather than a lily despite its name, the flower associated with French kingship from at least the twelfth century and linked in legend to the baptism of Clovis. Its three parts were read as faith, wisdom and valour, or given a Trinitarian sense, and in Christian art the iris, like the lily, could stand for the Virgin Mary, its sword-shaped leaves recalling the sword of sorrow that pierced her. The flower thus carries two overlapping symbolic lives, the classical rainbow-messenger and the medieval royal and Marian emblem, layered onto a plant valued in plain fact for its colours and its fragrant root.

The flower itself, apart from any heraldic or Marian reading, became the subject of one of the best-known paintings in Western art: Vincent van Gogh painted Irises in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, working directly from the asylum garden in the first week after his admission, and the canvas, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, is read by art historians as a study in close observation undertaken as much for the artist's own stability as for the finished work.