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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Hatty wrote: | | The reference to the impossibility of lapis lazuli in an 8th C manuscript came from no less an authority than Christopher de Hamel in his Meetings. It was in a footnote in a font size that require a magnifying glass to decode as if to avoid detection. |
wise move on his part it came down the silk road
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| It is beginning to look like the arrow in the eye could be a nineteenth-century detail. |
Charles Dawson was one of those who asserted that the restorations of the restored Tapestry were fraudulent in intent, this claim is given added weight as Dawson himself committed multiple frauds and is widely considered the perpetrator of the best ie Piltdown Man. It takes one to know one.
Of course ortho hasn't cottoned on about the Lewis Chessmen.
See Noggin the Nog
See Castles in the Air for more on Dawson, and the Saxon Shore. .
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| It is beginning to look like the arrow in the eye could be a nineteenth-century detail. |
William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Wace all have varieties of Harold being killed by a combination or an arrow and then finished off by a knight. This is the current ortho position, the tapestry is interpreted dynamically, Harold dies as a result of a combination......of actions.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Let's work with ortho.
There are muliple accounts of Harold's death. Some traditions say that Harold was not killed at all or ......Harold redivivus.
This might explain why, if the Tapestry is a late account, Harold was portrayed as dying "twice." and the English ran away......
But then the actual end is missing. Why?
Beats me....did Harold reappear only to be lopped off ?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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You're right to muse about multiple accounts and the tapestry's missing end. The Bayeux Tapestry is described as 'unique' and is registered by UNESCO as a 'Memory of the World'.
The objective of UNESCO's programme is to safeguard valuable archive holdings and library collections, and to ensure they are preserved in the best conditions. The Bayeux Tapestry is an exception, as most of the other registered works are not on public display.
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So why haven't these questions been more widely raised?
| Two plaques at the entrance of the museum, one in French, the other in English, are testimonies of the Tapestry's universal value. The town of Bayeux thus places itself amongst the world's most popular cultural destinations. |
Very reminiscent of attitudes towards manuscripts.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Lapis lazuli or lazurite might have been traded down the silk road.
If you reckon long distance trade took place along this road during Roman times or before it seems to me it's possible. |
There is a further hint that the Tapestry is a bit ahead of its (eleventh century) time. It is described as having a quite sophisticated use of perspective
| 9 pieces of linen fabric are sewn together for a total length of 68,58 metres. 10 shades of wool strings provided effects of perspective and depth to the 626 characters, the 37 buildings, among them the Mont Saint-Michel, the 41 ships and other 202 horses and mules. |
which is surprising since perspective in art isn't supposed to have appeared before the 1380s or thereabouts (credited to Fillipo Brunelleshi sculpting the Baptistery door in Florence and, later, developed by another Italian artist, Paolo Uccello)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Yes, questions of perspective were right on the cusp at the time the Bayeux Tapestry was being put together in the fourteenth century. [He says with newfound certainty.] This raises an interesting question: how do forgers recreate something without something they don't know they have? That is why the Bayeux Tapestry has elements of perspective while not being in perspective. You can always make something that is consciously primitive but it will always be unconsciously modern.
The problem though is that when it comes to True Believers and Great Works of Art, such anachronisms will always be greeted with joyous cries of wonderment not dark looks of suspicion. "Look how brilliant the tapestry designers were, they were even playing around with notions of perspective." cf Beowulf, Herodotus, Lascaux etc etc. Not that I'm saying any of these...
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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It looks to me like propaganda for an invasion, not a commemoration tapestry after one.
After much soul searching, I am ruling out 1066. (Coz that would be spooky, even with Runes)
So it's 1216.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'd forgotten that one! It fits propaganda-wise but how do you account for the lack of a tapestry-making tradition in France that early?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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AS a detour distinguish between tapestry and embroidery.
Embroidery is the art of applying decoration by needle and thread to the surface of a piece of already woven cloth.
Bayeux is embroidery (wool on Linen)
The tapestry-making tradition in France being later then is pretty irrelevant.
The question is did embroidered wall hangings prefigure woven ones?
Is Bayeaux a late embroidered wall hanging rather than the first tapestry?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You haven't told us what tapestry is.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Wace all have varieties of Harold being killed by a combination or an arrow and then finished off by a knight. This is the current ortho position, the tapestry is interpreted dynamically, Harold dies as a result of a combination......of actions. |
The earliest written reference to Harold being killed by an arrow in the eye is in an annal by Henry of Huntingdon (died 1154) according to the excellent Chicago University site
| Henry of Huntington, writing about 1130, also mentions an arrow. In the Historia Anglorum, he states that "Duke William instructed the archers not to shoot their arrows directly at the enemy, but rather into the air, so that the arrows might blind the enemy squadron….Meanwhile the whole shower sent by the archers fell around King Harold, and he himself sank to the ground, struck in the eye" (VI.30). William and Henry may have been inspired by the scene depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps made for the cathedral there, which was dedicated in 1077. |
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/anglo-saxon/hastings/harold.html
Henry's Historia Anglorum seems to have been passed over by later historians. Perhaps it got confused with/overtaken by a work of the same name by a later chronicler, Matthew Paris.
Henry's history finally got published in its entirety in 1996 with a blurb making him sound more important than anyone had hitherto realised
| His work is a major source for events in England and Normandy in his lifetime. Henry's pages are filled with good stories, including the first written record of Cnut and the waves, and of Henry's death from a surfeit of lampreys. The final two books consist of poems that show Henry to be one of the finest of Anglo-Latin poets. Henry's work has never before been published in its entirety. The 1879 edition in the Rolls series provided only a Latin text, omitted three books and other sections of the text, and failed to take account of several manuscripts |
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Historia_Anglorum.html?id=O6U5BTD0-rYC&redir_esc=y
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | You haven't told us what tapestry is. |
The Oxford Dictionary definition of tapestry seems to find it hard to differentiate from embroidery
| A piece of thick textile fabric with pictures or designs formed by weaving coloured weft threads or by embroidering on canvas, used as a wall hanging or soft furnishing.. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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OK, here's the difference. To make an embroidery, you get a piece of cloth backing (usually linen) and then you use a needle to weave wool into it to make pleasing shapes. To make a tapestry, you get a piece of cloth backing (usually canvas, a form of linen) and then you use a needle to weave wool into it to make pleasing shapes.
The only difference is that you cover the entire surface in the latter case, but not in the former i.e. if the Bayeux weavers had filled in the background (sky, sea, greensward etc) they would have produced a tapestry.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The main reason that Canterbury was deemed to be the place where the tapestry was made is the similarity of the woven images to illustrations in 'chronicles associated with Canterbury'. They mean of course the St Augustine's Gospels
| where the Tapestry differs from Norman accounts, it appears to follow traditions found in chronicles connected with Canterbury . |
plus naturellement 'inscriptions', i.e. Olde English words, in the tapestry
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