Cartouches with landscapes and armorials against a mille-fleurs ground ca. 1550 Flemish, Bruges With the distinctive long, low format of a wainscot tapestry, this hanging can be attributed with confidence to weavers working in the great Flemish city of Bruges, who since the mid-fifteenth century had sought to distinguish themselves from the massive, monumental narrative and allegorical wall hangings perfected by Brussels weavers, by specializing in armorial tapestries against mille-fleurs grounds, as well as in similarly formatted choir tapestries. As experienced in this tapestry, by the mid-sixteenth century Bruges cartoon designers and weavers updated conventional flower-strewn mille-fleurs by developing a warmer palette and by massing the flowers so closely together that the dark blank ground is almost obscured. The floral pattern becomes a glorious, abstract mass of dappling color; in technique, daring weaving styles like eccentric wefts (which deviate in thin sinuous lines from t