Top of Best Flower Tattoo Designs 2011 – The Lily Tattoo 2011

Top of Best Flower Tattoo Designs 2011 – The Lily Tattoo 2011

The Lily flower is my girlfriend’s favourite one. I think many other women feel the same about it. I must admit it is quite a beautiful flower, but what I appreciate most about it, is that it is a great subject for wonderful tattoo designs.

The lily is native of the Balkan Peninsula in south-eastern Europe, from where it was imported in other European countries, where it became first one of the most admired flowers and then on of the most popular flower tattoos.

 Traditionally Lily flowers are white – noble, elegant, white flowers, which have been often associated with ideas of purity and innocence.

Christians made of the lily a symbol of purity to represent the divine virginity. St. Joseph is often depicted with a stick from which sprout white lilies. A legend says that Mary chose Joseph because she saw him among many with a white lily in his hand.

Throughout the centuries the lily has been associated with several Saints and the Archangel Gabriel.

But a lily has not always symbolized purity and chastity: Lilies’ typical phallic pistil and their erotic fragrance made quite the opposite impression on ancient Greeks, who linked these flowers with concepts like fertility and procreation.

 

Myths say that the first lily was born from a drop of milk fell from a Juno’s breast while nursing the baby Hercules.

The lily is also the heraldic flower for excellence. The connection with procreation may have been behind Louis VII decision to adopt the fleur-de-lis as French coat of arms. The legend says that a lily was brought to him by an angel. So began the story of the French lily, which had also to ensure the prosperity of the royal line.

A stylized lily is still regarded as the emblem of the city of Florence, Italy, and also a quite common tattoo design in that region.

 Top of Best Flower Tattoo Designs 2011 – The Lily Tattoo 2011