The Enduring Imperfection of the Bayeux Tapestry

“ And when we consider how delicate, slender, and frail is the fibre of a linen thread, and that the various elements of decay, always busy in the work of corrupting and destroying the works of man, have proved themselves powerful enough to waste away and crumble into ruin the proudest structures which he has ever attempted to rear, we are amazed that these slender filaments have been able to resist their action so long. The Bayeux tapestry has lasted nearly a thousand years. ”

“ The Bayeux tapestry is a chronicle of the conquest of England by the Normans, opening with the mission of Harold to Duke William, and terminating with the battle of Hastings. The designs, which were probably the work of an Italian artist, are represented in worsted work, the colours of which, notwithstanding the great age of the tapestry, are still bright and distinct. The tapestry was placed at an early period in a side chapel of the cathedral of Bayeux, where it was regarded with veneration by the people. ”

“ Besides a tiny shred (No. 675, p. 6) of the very needlework itself, we have here a coloured plaster-cast of one of the figures in the so-called Bayeux Tapestry, which, among some, it has of late been a fashion to look upon as a great historic document, because it was, they say, worked by no less a personage than William’s own queen, Matilda, helped by her handmaids.
Its present and modern title is altogether a misnomer. It is needlework, and no tapestry. Not Normandy, but England, is most likely to have been the country; not Bayeux, but London, the place wherein it was wrought. ”

“ It seems there was no treasure in Europe unknown to Napoleon. He commanded in 1803 that the Bayeux tapestry, of which he had heard so much, be brought to the National Museum for his inspection. The playwrights of Paris seized on the pictured cloth as material for their imagination, and, refusing to take seriously the crude figures, wrote humorously of Matilda eternally at work over her ridiculous task, surrounded with simple ladies equally blind to art and nature. It is only too easy to let humour play about the ill-drawn figures. ”

“ The tapestry thrills with life: it is not a mere strip of worked linen, but what we in these latter days would call a “human document,” and it has come down through nine hundred years bearing more detail, more history, on its folds than has ever been told to us by any monkish parchment or royal scroll. ”

“ The first authentic monument where this mail-armour is represented is on the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, representing the invasion of England by William Duke of Normandy in 1066; the most famous example of medieval tapestry in existence, though other specimens are to be seen at Berne, Nancy, La Chaise Dieu, and Coventry. The art of the tapissier, however, in the eleventh century, when the Bayeux tapestry was made, would appear to have been on the decline. 53In the beginning of the fourteenth century plate-armour began to come into use ”

“ This moment proves to be the turning point of the battle; the French fight with renewed vigour (73, 74, 75) , and beat their way up to Harold, who is killed by an arrow (76) (Plate XII.) . The English army is discouraged and flies (77, 78, 79) .{9}
Here the Tapestry ends, and it is not quite clear if it had been intended to pursue the subject further. According to Dr. Ducarel the tapestry, when hung, exactly filled the nave of the Cathedral; so that very likely no more was ever designed.
The borders that run above and below well repay study. ”

“ Again, the architecture, the dresses, the armour, the furniture, of the Tapestry are those which prevailed at the period of the Conquest, and at no other. It is at all times exceedingly difficult, whether by writing or painting, to portray accurately the manners, language, and modes of thought, of an anterior period. ”

“ The arrival of Harold in Normandy, his stay with William, his swearing of loyalty, his return to England, the death of Edward the Confessor, the subsequent election of Harold to the throne of England, with the expedition itself culminating in the Battle of Hastings, are all shown in the course of the story. It is as much a defence of William’s conduct as a history of his triumph.
The Tapestry is generally considered to be contemporary, or almost contemporary, with the events it portrays, and it is evident that if such be the case it is an historical document of the very first importance. ”

“ At first we see them pure and true, then muddy, uncertain, until a dull confusion comes, and the hanging is depressing. When, at the last, it came that a tapestry was but a painting in wool, with as many thousand differently united threads as would reproduce the shading of brush-blended paint, the whole thing fell [Pg 193] of its own weight, and we of to-day value less the unlimited pains of the elaborate dyer and weaver than we do the simpler work. ”

“ But, amidst deformity or poverty of art in the material element, if there is any, however slight, artistic power employed, the outward defects will be qualified, and almost transformed, to the eye of an appreciating spectator, through the inner power which speaks from the painter's soul to his own: just as we learn to overlook, or even to admire, plain features, and anything short of positive ugliness of outline, in those whose mental greatness and moral beauty we have learned to venerate and to love. ”

“ When the power over materials and effects becomes complete, so that the artist can as it were perform feats of conquest; when at the same time the feeling has died out that he is treading upon holy ground, we have splendid achievements in the way of intense expression, whether physical or mental, of force, of momentary action, of grief or joy, which are good and great, but which lead imitators into a false track, and so ruin the art which they were thought to perfect. ”

“ In painting, poetry, music, sculpture, and architecture, satisfactory replies must be given, or the mind refuses to recognize the work under consideration as fulfilling the conditions necessary to perfection within its individual range. Too often worthlessness of meaning is hidden under exquisite execution, the most dangerous form an aberration from the true principles of art can take, especially in an age when the material receives an undue proportion of attention, and the spirit is exposed to so many risks of being replaced by a false, outside glitter. ”

“ The painters of high renown, all those whose works proclaim genius, have excelled in the delineation of the beautiful; but how small is their number compared to the vast craved who have strained every nerve to depict beauty and have only left us mediocrity!
If a painter could be dispensed from making his works beautiful, every man might be an artist; for nothing is easier than to fashion ugliness, and brush and canvas would be as easy to handle as mortar and trowel. ”

“ How the later artists lost the simple secret of earnest vigor of their predecessors, while gaining in everything that was not that! Grace, finish, refinement, accuracy of drawing, richness of coloring, all that merely tended towards perfection and execution, while the simplicity and single-heartedness of conception died away more and more. All art seems by degrees to outgrow its strength, and certainly in painting the archaic cradle touches one's imagination as neither the graceful youth nor mature manhood do. ”

“ But, even in artists, modern life tends to deform these ideals, and in any exhibition of modern paintings ninety-nine out of a hundred of these works will be ugly; they will display, perhaps, admirable technique, complete mastery of detail, fine brush work, perhaps unexceptionable drawing, but the combination of these qualities will produce merely a sense of ugliness on the retina of the observer of them. ”

“ Let us have, at least, good things—the best originals we can procure, and the next best, copies, and engravings of the best; and not waste time and squander means in searching out for chronological histories, the attenuated deformities of the Byzantine schools, the hideous performances of those predecessors in art, who had not yet acquired the knowledge of drawing with any tolerable correctness. ”

“ She knew exactly how artistic effects were obtained, how and why certain things were done, why realism, so-called, could never be anything but caricature, and why over-elaboration of small matters can never be otherwise than disproportionate. ”

“ It is not necessary to live, but it is necessary to preserve one’s type unharmed, to remain faithful to one’s idea, to protect one’s monad against alteration and degradation.
November 7, 1878.—To-day we have been talking of realism in painting, and, in connection with it, of that poetical and artistic illusion which does not aim at being confounded with reality itself. Realism wishes to entrap sensation; the object of true art is only to charm the imagination, not to deceive the eye. When we see a good portrait we say, “It is alive!”—in other words, our imagination lends it life. ”

“ Hunter says that "the most famous tapestries in the world are the Renaissance tapestries, though the only distinction in most cases between the Gothic tapestries of the end of the fifteenth and the Renaissance tapestries at the beginning of the sixteenth, is that in one, whatever architecture or ornamentation or decoration is used has Gothic motives, while the models for these same details in the later tapestries is drawn from the Renaissance." The Brussels tapestries of the early sixteenth century are particularly beautiful and are the despair of the modern tapestry makers. ”

“ History has ever its reflection on arts and crafts, but perhaps it has in tapestry its most intentional record. It is a forced and deliberate piece of egoism when a monarch or a conqueror has a huge picture drawn exhibiting his grandeur in battle or his elegance at home. In some hangings modesty limits to the border of an imaginary and decorative scene the monogram of the heroine of history for whose apartments the tapestry was woven. ”

“ The artist of purest aim, sensitive to these emotions, withdraws naturally from the field of blood, confessing that no scene of battle finds a place in the highest Art,—that man, created in the image of God, can never be pictured degrading, profaning, violating that sacred image.
Were this sentiment adopted in literature as in Art, war would be shorn of its false glory. Poet, historian, orator, all should join with the Artist in saying, No battle-piece! ”

“ This new metaphysic, this new attempt at absolute realism, this final development of scholastic art-dogma, as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the rules for painting religious ikons, evolved and practiced for centuries by the Byzantine monks of Mount Athos, was rapidly conquering the whole field of aft when the past war broke out. Nor has the war altogether suppressed its manifestations.
The enormous destruction of human life, of nature, of art, in the past war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results achieved by either side. ”

“ His portraiture is a protest, an indictment, and an inspiration. He destroys the foe’s misrepresentation and exposes his mendacity while constructively informing the mind and awakening the imagination. He enables us to grasp all the details of sorrow, of devotion, together with all the splendor of modern battle behind his story. He horrifies us with the brutality of uncivilized warfare, and at the same time arouses within us the determination to right the wrongs of an outraged world. ”

“ True, perhaps, for the moment; but, then, such times as these are in many ways unfavourable to the creative instinct; moreover they will leave in restless, sensitive natures lassitude, recoil, a sense of surfeit. Quite probably the war may produce a real masterpiece or two, formed out of its very stuff, by some eager mind innocent hitherto of creative powers, for whom actual experience of the sights and feelings of war may be a baptism into art. ”

“ It is a glorious thing for man to war
With time, by some great work. Wherefore was skill,
And energy, and industry, bestowed,
If that he use them not? How many hearts
In the completion of this building throbbed
With the fine pride of art—that pride which leads
To all that can redeem or civilize
Our human nature. Now, what solemn thoughts
Brood here! an atmosphere from which we draw
Such lessons as the dead alone can give,
And only they when present to the mind,
As they are present in this monument—
Oh, build tombs for the dead, they're mightier there
Than in their living palaces! ”

“ But when the age is a troubled one, and the nation is in the throes of struggle, it is the duty of art to struggle with it, inspiring and guiding it, protecting it, and combating prejudice. I have heard people complain of the violent excesses into which art will fall if it takes this road. This is not the fault of art, but of the wrongs which it will have exposed, which must be done away with. It is not the purpose of art to reconcile and pacify, but to intensify life, render it stronger, greater, and better. Art is the enemy of all the enemies of life. ”

“ Lawyers and priests deal with the accidents of life. Art is concerned with realities. History makes too much of the soldier and the statesman, and too little of the artist. A great tapestry is a record of real achievement in the realm of beauty that surpasses the most eloquent tribute of words to the deeds of kings.
I tried hard to paint Mr. Balfour, but somehow he managed to elude me. And a strange thing happened. All painters are conscious of the phases of a portrait as it grows on the canvas, how it resembles in turn each and every member of the family of the person painted. ”