MICHAEL WOOD’S VIEW
The news of President Macron’s proposed loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK has aroused huge interest here in Britain, not just at the prospect of hosting this marvellous work of art, but also in what it symbolises about Britain’s history.
That a fragile, 70-metre-long embroidery from the 11th century has survived at all is of course little short of miraculous. It is still virtually intact, apart from the loss at the end of perhaps 3 metres of cloth, which in most experts’ view would have showed William the Conqueror crowned in Westminster Abbey, a scene to match Edward the Confessor enthroned at the start (for a brilliant – and to my eye convincing – reimagining of the lost section by the embroiderers of Alderney, see alderneybayeuxtapestry. com). But after more than a century of intensive study, there is still no end to the embroidery’s mysteries. The borders, for example, are filled with allegorical images whose meaning probably eluded the tapestry’s Norman patrons but was presumably well understood by its English makers. And on that we should be clear: it was sewn by English needlewomen – it is English.
The wonderful achievements of English medieval embroidery were coveted across Europe, as we saw last year at the jaw-dropping Opus Anglicanum exhibition at the V&A. Few examples of Anglo-Saxon textiles survive, but the finest are the beautiful stole and maniples now in Durham Cathedral that were presented by King Æthelstan to St Cuthbert’s shrine in AD 934. These stunning embroideries, with abundant use of gold thread on sombre, glittering Byzantine-styled figures of prophets and saints, were commissioned by a woman called Ælflæd, whom we can imagine supervising her needlewomen in a workshop attached to her own estate. We also know that another Ælflæd, the widow of the hero Byrhtnoth, who died in battle against the Vikings at Maldon in AD 991, presented a large embroidery to Ely abbey that depicted his deeds.
The Bayeux Tapestry is in that tradition. Its English origin is revealed by its style, needlework, spelling and orthography, but most clearly in the representation of figures, animals and trees, all of which are so close to images in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts from Canterbury that one can only assume they were its models. It was surely done there.
But the way the story is told is also revealing. Commissioned perhaps for the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo, 10 years after the battle of Hastings, it tells a tale of violent conquest. Over that decade the English had suffered massive dislocation, devastation, and huge loss of life and property. In the ravaging of Northumbria, the people had been reduced to selling their children into slavery, to eating rats and grass. This recent experience must have been in the minds of the women who made this extraordinary piece. And their embroidery takes us into the heart of combat. There are many great works of art depicting war, but few convey so well the adrenalin rush of attack. In film there is Saving Private Ryan, but few works of art (the Alexander Mosaic in Naples among them) capture the surge of battle as well as the Bayeux Tapestry.
The embroiderers portray the unfolding events and the terrible climactic struggle with astounding clarity and even-handedness. William – “hard beyond measure”, it was said – is a powerful noble king; but Harold is shown with sympathy. We even see Norman atrocities, women and children fleeing for their lives from their burning houses. No meeting of minds here, just the triumph of might, and the tragedy of war.
Whoever planned and oversaw this was a genius. Think of the phantasmal fleet invading Harold’s mind after he makes his oath of allegiance to William, his hands laid on holy relics; the terrified civilians, the dead stripped and mutilated. From the women of Troy to the women of Aleppo, it is women who know the true cost of war. And in the Bayeux Tapestry that awful knowledge and supreme skill combine to give us not only a great work of art, but a unique work of history.