![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This article examines how colour was used as a tool of pictorial narrative in the Bayeux Tapestry and the illustrated Old English Hexateuch, the two longest such cycles to survive from 11th-century England. The dyes employed for the former and the pigments of the latter are identified; the palettes that they permitted their respective artists to realize are set out; the colouring of cognate scenes are compared; and the general principles (such as they were) that affected the deployment of colour in the two works are explained.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 S. A. Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry: history and bibliography (Woodbridge 1998) and The Bayeux Tapestry, Bayeux Médiathèque Municipale: MS.1, a sourcebook, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (Turnhout 2013), provide an overview of the extensive literature on the object up to 2013. Subsequent monographs of note include E. C. Pastan and S. D. White with K. Gilbert, The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts, a reassessment (Woodbridge 2014); A. C. Henderson with G. Owen-Crocker ed., Making Sense of the Bayeux Tapestry: readings and reworkings (Manchester 2016); S. Lemagnen, La Tapisserie de Bayeux: une découverte pas à pas (Paris 2016); X. Barral i Altet, En Souvenir du Roi Guillaume. La broderie de Bayeux (Paris 2016); S. Lemagnen, S. A. Brown, and G. Owen-Crocker ed., L’Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux. Naissance, composition et style d’un chef-d’oeuvre médiéval (Rouen 2018); X. Barral i Altet and D. Bates, La Tapisserie de Bayeux, 2 edns (Paris 2019 and 2020); and D. Musgrove and M. Lewis, The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unravelling the Norman Conquest (London 2021).
2 Further on the coloured-line drawing technique, see R. Gameson, The Role of Art in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Oxford 1995), 12–13. Further on the embroidery techniques used in the Tapestry, see A. Lester-Makin, ‘The Front tells the Story, the Back tells the History: a technical discussion of the embroidery of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Making Sense of the Bayeux Tapestry, 23–40, esp. 37; and A. Lester-Makin, ‘Les six châteaux de la Tapisserie de Bayeux. Une discussion technique du travail de broderie de la Tapisserie de Bayeux’, in L’Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, 73–91.
3 For the text, see The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo, ed. R. Marsden, Early English Text Society, os, 330 (Oxford 2008).
4 Facsimile: The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B.IV, ed. C. R. Dodwell and P. Clemoes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 18 (Copenhagen 1974). For further bibliography to c. 2012, see H. Gneuss and M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments written or owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto 2014), no. 315—to whose listings may now be added: S. McKendrick and K. Doyle, The Art of the Bible: Illuminated Manuscripts from the Medieval World (London 2016), no. 11; and C. Breay and J. Story ed., Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War (London 2018), no. 94. The other copy, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 509 (N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, Oxford 1957, no. 304) is actually an Old English Heptateuch, including a rendering of Judges as well.
5 See Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, 58.
6 It is documented in the 15th-century library catalogue of St Augustine’s: St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. B. C. Barker-Benfield, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 13, 3 vols (London 2008), I, 405–06 (entry BA 1.95). For the case that the late-12th-century annotations were done at St Augustine’s Abbey—which, if true, would bring the attested provenance back by three centuries—see A. N. Doane and W. P. Stoneman, Purloined Letters: the twelfth-century reception of the Anglo-Saxon illustrated Hexateuch (British Library, Cotton Claudius B.iv), Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 395 (Tempe 2011), esp. 248–51.
7 Contrast, e.g., Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1431 (C. M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066–1190, London 1975, no. 10), an illustrated herbal made at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, c. 1100, whose artwork also remained unfinished: here the irregular plant-shaped gaps within the completed text leave no doubt that the latter was transcribed before the artwork was (abortively) added.
8 A not uncommon phenomenon in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts: see R. Gameson, ‘Book Decoration in England, c. 871–c.1100’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain I, c. 400–1100, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge 2012), 249–93, esp. 283–85.
9 Discussed in more detail in Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, 62–64.
10 Also the opinion of Dodwell (Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, 59) and E. Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts c. 900–1066 (London 1976), no. 86.
11 F. Wormald, ‘Style and Design’, in The Bayeux Tapestry, a comprehensive survey, ed. F. M. Stenton, 2nd edn (London 1965), 25–36; repr. (with fewer and inferior illustrations) in F. Wormald, Collected Writings I: Studies in Medieval Art from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries, ed. J. J. G. Alexander, T. J. Brown, and J. Gibbs (London and Oxford 1984), 139–52.
12 C. Hart, ‘The Canterbury contribution to the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Art and Symbolism in Medieval Europe, 5, ed. G. de Boe and F. Verhaeghe (Zellik 1997), 7–15; and ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and Schools of Illumination at Canterbury’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 22 (2000), 117–67, the quoted phrase at 123.
13 These correspondences have, of course, been noted by others, notably Wormald, ‘Style and Design’, 30–32. See also D. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (London 1986), 41; R. Gameson ed., The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge 1997), 168–70; G. R. Owen-Crocker, ‘Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury Eyes’, in Anglo-Saxons: Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart, ed. S. D. Keynes and A. P. Smyth (Dublin 2006), 243–65; and G. R. Owen-Crocker, ‘Reading the Mind of the Bayeux Tapestry Master’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 15 (2021), 37–66. M. Lewis (‘La Tapisserie de Bayeux et l’art anglo-saxon’, in Tapisserie de Bayeux, 229–45) has urged caution when linking Canterbury-produced illuminations with the Bayeux Tapestry.
14 Caveat lector: while the original typed report (‘Travaux réalisés sur la Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde’) of 4 March 1983 specifies à propos beige and ochre that ‘Quelques échantillons contenant gaude et indigotine ou indigotine seule … et présentant une couleur ocre prouvent qu’un autre principe chimique non identifiable a participé à la teinture’ (‘Certain samples containing woad and indigotin or indigotin alone … and displaying an ochre colour prove that another chemical constituent—unidentifiable—was involved in the dyeing’; 18–19), this was omitted from the published accounts of the work that appeared in 2004 and which detailed only the three dye-stuffs that could be identified (I. Bédat and B. Girault-Kurtzeman, ‘The Technical Study of the Bayeux Embroidery’, in The Bayeux Tapestry Embroidering the Facts of History, ed. P. Bouet, B. Levy and F. Neveux (Caen 2004), 83–109, esp. 91–92; and B. Oger, ‘Results of the Scientific Tests (1982–1983)’, in ibid., 117–23, esp. 120–21). Consequently, subsequent discussions that depend upon these two accounts (e.g. Brown, Bayeux Tapestry, xvii; Bouet and Neveux, Tapisserie de Bayeux, 167–68) also erroneously state that only three dyes were involved. To add to the confusion, the English translation of the articles by Bédat and Girault-Kurtzeman and Oger mistakenly uses ‘woad’ where ‘weld’ (Reseda luteola) is meant, and refers to ‘pastel’ as if it were different from, rather than a synonym for, Isatis tinctoria (woad).
15 C. Boust, ‘Étude par imagerie scientifique de la Tapisserie de Bayeux’, in L’Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, esp. 343.
16 There are further tints in the restorations, produced using modern colorants.
17 Oger, ‘Results’, 119–20.
18 For the occurrence of ‘wad’ in Anglo-Saxon glossaries, see J. Earle, English Plant Names from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century (Oxford 1880), 16, 32. For onomastic evidence of woad and woad dyeing in Anglo-Saxon England more generally, see C. P. Biggam, Blue in Old English, an interdisciplinary semantic study (Amsterdam 1997), esp. 96–99, 128–29, 181–84, 224, 228–33, 259, 265, 271–74, 279–85.
19 Oger, ‘Results’, 119–20.
20 Thus fabrics dyed with indigotin, madder and possibly weld are known from Sutton Hoo; there are examples dyed with weld and madder from Lower Brook Street, Winchester; examples dyed with indigotin and madder from Coppergate, York; and examples dyed with indigotin, madder and weld from London: see E. Coatsworth and G. R. Owen-Crocker, Medieval Textiles of the British Isles AD 400–1100: an annotated bibliography, British Archaeological Reports, British Series 445 (Oxford 2007), 69 and 136; 91; 91, 113, 125 and 126; and 116, respectively.
21 They are mentioned as such by Geoffrey Chaucer (‘The Former Age’, l. 17: The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson, 3rd edn, Boston 1987, 651). For the use of madder, weld and indigotin on a wide range of predominantly small-scale medieval textiles of French origin, see J. Wouters, ‘Analyse des colorants’, in Fils renoués: trésors textiles du moyen âge en Languedoc-Roussillon, ed. D. Cardon (Carcassone 1993), 158–66; for their use in the largest extant cycle of medieval tapestries (the Apocalypse of Angers), see P.-M. Auzas, C. de Maupeou, C. de Mérindol, F. Muel and A. Ruais, L’Apocalypse d’Angers. Chef-d’oeuvre de la tapisserie médiévale (Fribourg and Paris 1985), 45; and for their presence in a late medieval tapestry from Strasbourg, see A. Rapp Buri and M. Stucky-Schürer, Zahm und Wild: Basler und Strassburger Bildteppiche des 15. Jahrhunderts (Mainz 1990), 37. In these cases the dyes were identified by thin-layer chromatography or high-performance liquid chromatography.
22 C. Chavanne, ‘Les couleurs de la Tapisserie de Bayeux’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Université de Paris 1: Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2022).
23 C. Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry: the life story of a masterpiece (London 2006), 121–33. A fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry removed by Charles Stothard, which was never reattached so has not generally been on display, shows the colours of the work as they were in the early 19th century. See M. Lewis, ‘The Mystery of Charles Stothard, FSA, and the Bayeux Tapestry Fragment’, Antiq. J., 87 (2007), 400–06.
24 Bédat and Girault-Kurtzeman, ‘Technical Study’, 92. Further analysis of these threads and their dyes as part of the forthcoming planned ‘restoration’ of the Tapestry might shed further light on the practicalities of making the work and on the different hands/teams responsible.
25 The latter appears to have been used to insert ‘white’ in between the blue and red-brown loops of the enigmatic round object carried by a figure in Scene 41.
26 For full details of the equipment used and the procedures followed, along with their limitations, see R. Gameson, A. Beeby, F. Fiorillo, C. Nicholson, P. Ricciardi and S. Reynolds, The Pigments of British Medieval Illuminators: a scientific and cultural study (London 2023), 1–41, 423–27.
27 Fols 2r, 11r, 11v, 13v, 15v, 16v, 59r, 60r, 60v, 73r, 141r, 141v. Twelve was the maximum number of pages that could be analysed in the time available.
28 PbCO3.Pb(OH)2.
29 2PbO.PbO2 or Pb3O4.
30 As2S3.
31 See Gameson et al., Pigments of British Medieval Illuminators, 93–107.
32 For an apparent use of undyed white wool, see note 25 above.
33 As the end of the Bayeux Tapestry is now missing, absolute certainty is impossible.
34 Further on the phenomenon and its possible causes see Gameson et al., Pigments of British Medieval Illuminators, 14.
35 These changes do not correspond to the divisions between quires.
36 E.g. respectively: fols 12r and 15v; 4r; and 6r.
37 Fols 5v and 3v, respectively. The depiction of the Red Sea (fol. 92r) was taken no further than a rough outline sketch, so there is no indication of how it was to be painted.
38 The scene numbers used here are those that were marked on the backing fabric in the 19th century.
39 The last two scenes occur on fols 32v and 8r, respectively.
40 Scenes 19 and 42.
41 Scene 47.
42 For which see, in general, G. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edn (Woodbridge 2004), chapter VII (often drawing upon the evidence of the Hexateuch and the Bayeux Tapestry themselves). For evaluation of the historicity of dress depicted in the Tapestry, see M. Lewis, The Archaeological Authority of the Bayeux Tapestry, British Archaeological Reports, British Series 404 (Oxford 2005), chapter 5.
43 See M. J. Lewis, ‘Identity and Status in the Bayeux Tapestry: the iconographic and artefactual evidence’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 29 (2006), 100–20.
44 That visual variety and decorative effect were more important than symbolism in determining colour here is indicated by the fact that the highest-status figures in the Tapestry (Edward, Harold, Guy and William) can wear robes, tunics and cloaks in almost any of the available colours and that, when such figures are juxtaposed, the colouring of their clothing tends to be complementary: thus at the oath swearing (Scene 23), William has a yellow tunic and a blue-green cloak, while Harold has the reverse.
45 Fols 53r–54v. The tunic worn by St Michael in the Crowland Psalter (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 296, fol. 40v; third quarter of the 11th century) is depicted in a similar way which, given that the garment adorns a warrior saint, may be meant to suggest mail. Whether the artist of the Hexateuch understood ‘hringfah’ to mean ‘mail’ and hence whether that is what is meant to be evoked by his rendering of Joseph’s coat are open questions.
46 See further G. Owen-Crocker, ‘Colour and Imagination in the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Making Sense of the Bayeux Tapestry, 41–53, esp. 46.
47 For the rare cases where yellow and blue detailing may have been intended to evoke gold and silver thread respectively, see Owen-Crocker, ‘Colour and Imagination’, 43–46.
48 Fol. 141v.
49 Fol. 60r; Genesis 41:43.
50 Fol. 11v; Genesis 8:18–20.
51 Fol. 11r.
52 Fol. 15v. On artistic prototypes for Ælfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry, see M. J. Lewis, ‘The Ælfgyva of the Bayeux Tapestry’ (forthcoming).
53 Respectively fols 7v, 11r, 12v, 20r.
54 Fol. 59r.
55 Fol. 13v.
56 See note 5 above.
57 If the few extant model-books dating from before c. 1250 (W. Scheller, Exemplum. Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900–ca. 1450) (Amsterdam 1996), nos 3–14) are a reasonable guide to the genre as a whole, they indicate that motifs were often copied uncoloured (nos 3–5 and 14) or just with touches of a single colour (nos 8, 10, 12); only two (nos 6 and 9) have extensive colouring.
58 On the relationship between models and copies in this period more generally, see, e.g., H. Swarzenski, ‘The Role of Copies in the Formation of the Styles of the Eleventh Century’, in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, ed. M. Meiss, 4 vols (Princeton 1963), I (Romanesque and Gothic Art), 7–18.
59 London, British Library, MS Harley 603. Monographic study: W. Noel, The Harley Psalter (Cambridge 1995); for further bibliography, see Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, no. 422. The pigments are identified and their deployment discussed in Gameson et al., Pigments of British Medieval Illuminators, 99–100, 111–12.
60 Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 32. Facsimile: Utrecht-Psalter, vollständige Faksimile-ausgabe im Originalformat der Handschrift 32 aus dem Besitz der Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, ed. K. van der Horst and J. H. A. Engelbregt, Codices Selecti 75, 2 vols (Graz 1984).
61 The former is Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, MS b.21, fol. 9r. Facsimile: Das Evangelistar Kaiser Heinrichs III. Perikopenbuch aus Echternach, ed. G. Knoll, 2 vols (Wiesbaden 1981). The miniatures are also reproduced in G. Knoll ed., Das Echternacher Evangelistar Kaiser Heinrichs III (Wiesbaden 1995). For the pigments used in other, broadly contemporary Echternach books, see D. Oltrogge and R. Fuchs, Die Maltechnik des Codex Aureus aus Echternach. Ein Meisterwerk im Wandel (Nuremburg 2009), esp. 153–67. The latter is Trier, Stadtbibliothek, MS 24, fol. 9v. Facsimiles: Codex Egberti der Stadtbibliothek Trier, ed. H. Schiel, 2 vols (Basel 1960) and Egbert-Codex. Faksimile Codex Egberti (Lucerne 2005). See also G. Franz ed., Der Egbert Codex. Ein Höhepunkt der Buchmalerei vor 1000 Jahren (with identifications of the pigments, by D. Oltrogge and R. Fuchs, at 190–95).
62 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 14782: F. Avril and P. Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire (Paris 1987), no. 26. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct.D.2.16 (S.C. 2719) (Landévennec, early 10th century); the added miniatures are fols 72v and 146r: O. Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford I: German, Dutch, Flemish, French and Spanish Schools (Oxford 1966), nos 427 and 433. See further: J. J. G. Alexander, ‘A little-known Gospel Book of the later eleventh century from Exeter’, Burlington Magazine, 108 (1966), 6–16; and J. J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven and London 1992), 77, 80–82, with illus. 126–27.
63 One exception occurs on fol. 51r, where the horses are orange then blue in alternation.
64 That the design was marked out on the linen is not in doubt, despite no trace of any original underdrawing now being visible. Such underdrawing as is occasionally visible to the naked eye (e.g., above the mane of the horse below ‘pugnant’ at the division between scenes 55 and 56), as also that which was detected in the most recent campaign of hyperspectral imaging, relates to 19th-century restorations.
65 See Gameson et al., Pigments of British Medieval Illuminators, 100.
66 See M. J. Lewis, ‘Embroidery Errors in the Bayeux Tapestry and their Relevance for Understanding its Design and Production’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: new interpretations, ed. M. K. Foys, K. E. Overbey and D. Terkla (Woodbridge 2009), 130–40.
67 See Lester-Makin, ‘Technical Discussion’ and ‘Les six châteaux’.
68 For practical considerations militating against multiple, geographically dispersed locations see Lester-Makin, ‘Technical Discussion’, 36–39, and ‘Les six châteaux’, 87–90.
![Supercharge Your Next Research Paper: Research and write your next paper with Jenni AI.]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/112447/MPU-L1HU.png"})