Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum: Stitch by thrilling stitch, this story goes the whole 70 yardsThe Bayeux Tapestry’s here — and it’s wonderful, says Melanie McDonagh
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Melanie McDonagh1 minute ago
Golly, it’s big. Before you get close up to the Bayeux Tapestry, you can look down on it from an upper balcony and see all 70 metres of it under glass. Once you’re next to it, what strikes you is something different, which you can only see at close quarters… it’s that the pictures are made up of stitches. It sounds obvious — it is obvious — but what reproductions never really convey is the sheer physicality of the embroidery; you can see the way the stitches work, the way the figures are raised up with wool.
The Bayeux Tapestry at the British MuseumAFP/Getty
And what extraordinary skill those women had. For, of course, the execution of this was almost certainly women’s work; probably the nuns of Canterbury, perhaps with skilled laywomen, or maybe the convent at Barking. Englishwomen were famed for their skill at embroidery — it was known later as opus Anglicanum, or English work — and this is one of the finest early examples. The overall design may well have been by a man; we just don’t know. It was almost certainly commissioned by a man, maybe Bishop Odo of Bayeux. But it’s still the most celebrated work of art executed by women for a thousand years.
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It would of course have been even more vivid a thousand years ago before the colours faded, but it has been marvellously preserved all the same, even given problematic Victorian restoration (including the arrow in Harold’s eye — which is actually difficult to make out).
The scene depicting King Harold’s death on the Bayeux TapestryAFP/Getty
The tapestry is, I think, brilliantly displayed, with captions and little pictures on the dark wall behind telling visitors unobtrusively what’s happening in each section. The scene is set before you see the tapestry with photographic views of the very field in Hastings where the battle took place.
But the tapestry itself tells a story that draws the viewer in.
It’s exciting, the way a cartoon is exciting, with all the happenings spelt out in the captions, and you follow the story all the way along. It’s wonderful narrative design: a dramatic series of events, which is no less dramatic because we know what happens at the end. We see the unhappy ending. The caption tells us that “the English turned in flight” and there’s a little man in the bottom panel with a sad face — downturned mouth — turning towards the men on horseback with whips who are pursuing him (into the woods?).
Cartoon strip and stage set
The sequence of events from Edward the Confessor holding court right through to the flight of the English from the Battle of Hastings is outlined with marvellous economy and vivid detail in the main central panel. Usually the story proceeds left to right, but sometimes it comes to a stop for some central dramatic event. For instance, the death and burial of Edward the Confessor shows his hearse moving right to left towards the church, handily identified by the hand of God pointing from above — with acolytes holding bells to toll the dead. So, think of it as a stage set as much as a cartoon strip.
At the top and bottom of the main narrative section of the tapestry there are the decorative margins, except that they’re not all merely decorative. Sometimes they subvert the narrative (there are depictions of people going about their farming, indifferent to the fighting above), are amusing (the naked man with a big penis and the naked woman may be mildly subversive) or are part of the action. These replicate the humorous and grotesque images you find in the margins of manuscripts of the period, which may be realistic or fabulous — so we see what look like female centaurs at one point; in the bottom there’s bear-baiting or great eels in the sand under the sea. But sometimes the bottom panel is part of the narrative: Halley’s Comet, ingeniously depicted, ends up in the top section.
Both the high drama and the sordid brutality are unsparingly depicted
And in the final part, at the Battle of Hastings, we see the fighting happening in the main panel — knights charging on horseback, English defenders with their shield wall hacking them back. In the bottom margin underneath, however, the heroism is subverted: other men are busy pulling chain mail over the heads of dead or dying men or gathering up weapons taken from the dead — loot. That’s the other side of war; the looting, the despoliation of corpses, the dead horses. Both the high drama and the sordid brutality are unsparingly depicted.
Great men and ordinary people
There’s plenty here for armour nerds; we see the long English battle axes and round shields, and the tapering shields of the mounted Normans. (The English dismounted to fight.)
The tapestry is about the doings of great men and it shows the effects of their actions. So, when William decides to build a fleet — lovely, stripey coloured ships with fabulous prows — we see men cutting down trees to make it. When he builds a fort, we see the workers shovelling stones for its construction. When there’s a feast we see how William’s men found the food — by robbing local farmers, whom we see sadly bringing the soldiers their pigs and their cattle. And we see the fascinating business in the kitchens — there is something very like kebabs being brought to table along with roast fowl. We see ordinary people on the rough end of war: there are very few women in the tapestry, but one is unforgettable, holding up a hand in despair as her house burns, holding her little son’s hand with the other.
The work was executed by different hands within a unified design on a bleached linen base. The catalogue tells us there were five kinds of stitch, with the main outline done by split stitch. It’s finely done; the different stitches serve the same purpose as brush strokes in a painting, and in elaborate scenes, you see them in combination. Sometimes, for fine work, linen thread is used instead of wool. The palette of colour is limited, with just four main plants used to dye the wool, including woad, but they are used ingeniously to produce nine different shades. The colour is deployed brilliantly and dynamically in the work.
It is, in fact, a terrifically exciting narrative. It shows the pity as well as the brutality of war… and all in sophisticated needlework.
Incidentally, if you want a treat, go to Battle Abbey where English Heritage has conserved the site for the public, for the October 10 and 11 weekend, where there’ll be an impressive re-enactment of the whole thing. But even without the action, the abbey, built in reparation for the blood shed in the battle, and the field where it happened are enormously moving.
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