Comment by dtgriscom

2 days ago

I saw this. It was done by Victorian embroiderers, and was amazing, but the part I remember is one of the incidental characters. In the original, he was quite conspicuously nude; in the reproduction he was given a pair of shorts.

Yup, the article has images behind hyperlinks if you want to see him naked. Just Ctrl+f: "the original design with everything hanging out. "

Victorian embroiderers in 1088 when Odo, the Archbishop of Bayeux and half brother of William the Bastard/Conqueror, commissioned it to have it hung in the cathedral?

The tale was that it had been created by Queen Mathilde and her ladies in waiting, which of course was not true ... it was made by professional embroiderers, but long before the reign of Queen Victoria.

When Odo fell out of favor with William, the tapestry was folded and stored in a cedar box, opened each year for inventory. This is why it is so well preserved ... as opposed, for instance, to the massive Apocalypse Tapestry in Anjou that was used to protect orange orchards from frost.

> in the reproduction

The original is visible behind plexiglass in Bayeux. There is also a canvas reproduction -- I saw it in 1997 and don't recall whether it was bowdlerized.

P.S. Ah, I missed that it has been temporarily relocated from Bayeux to the British Museum. It will return to Bayeux within a year.

  • > Victorian embroiderers in 1088 when Odo, the Archbishop of Bayeux and half brother of William the Baster/Conqueror, commissioned it to have it hung in the cathedral?

    They are talking about the subject of the story, which is a reproduction made in 1886.