Listen to part of a lecture in an art appreciation class.

P: Now. Let's continue our survey of European art depicting historical events. Last week, we discussed some examples from Roman times in the ancient great Roman Empire. What artwork did we discuss last, Peter?

S: That'd be Trajan's Column, right? The tall column with carvings showing how the Roman army defeated the Dacians in a second-century war.

P: Right. Trajan's Column in Rome, it's from the beginning of the second century, and it tells the story of the Romans' eventual victory and events that preceded it in a series of carved pictures. So today we're going to move on to the medieval period, the European period after the Roman Empire collapsed. And we'll discuss an artwork that was surprisingly not unlike Trajan's Column. It's called the Bayeux Tapestry.

The Bayeux Tapestry is an enormous embroidered piece of cloth that was made in England in the 11th century. In this class, we're studying European artwork depicting historical events, and the Bayeux Tapestry is the most significant one from the medieval period. Art from this time was mostly religious in nature, typically produced in religious institutions like monasteries and convents and often displayed in churches. But the Bayeux Tapestry was a purely secular, non-religious artwork showing the story of England's conquest by William the Conqueror. It was a huge piece of embroidered cloth, half a meter tall and 70 meters long. Imagine 70 meters.

S: Wow. P: I say this piece of cloth was embroidered, and yet we refer to it as a tapestry. Does anybody know the difference between an embroidery and a tapestry?

S: I thought a tapestry is woven on a loom, and the designs, the images, are worked into the actual cloth. An embroidery, I thought, is a pattern or image that's added with thread after the cloth is already woven.

P: Very good. Both tapestries and embroideries are textile arts, and they both have images or patterns. The difference is in how the decorations are worked into the fabric. The Bayeux Tapestry, despite its name, is actually an embroidery, because its colorful images are sewn with thread.

S: Why do they call it a tapestry then?

P: Good question. I personally think it points to how little attention is generally paid to textile arts. Scholars tend to focus on arts like painting and sculpture, and I think that's unfortunate, because tapestries and embroideries are just as interesting. So the Bayeux Tapestry depicts William's conquest of England in the 11th century. What do you know about this historical event?

S: Wasn't it when people from Northern France, the Normans, led by William, invaded and conquered England?

P: Right. The Normans believed that the English King Edward had recognized William as his successor. But when King Edward died in the year 1066, an English aristocrat named Harold became king. The Normans felt betrayed, so they crossed the English Channel and invaded England. In the ensuing battle, William's Norman army defeated Harold's army. William was then crowned king of England and became known as William the Conqueror. So the Bayeux Tapestry is a long series of embroidered images that show this conquest and the events leading to it. For example, the artwork shows how the Normans sailed across the sea and prepared for battle, all culminating in William's victory.

Based on our discussion of Trajan's Column last week, you can see why art historians consider the Bayeux Tapestry to be a Roman-like art piece. Although the column and the Bayeux Tapestry were produced almost 1000 years apart, they are similar in what they show. For example, the narrative in the Bayeux Tapestry isn't limited to the battle. It's a complete chronicle of events leading to the battle. It even shows things like loading equipment onto ships, cooking, and so on.

S: Who did all this embroidering? You said the tapestry was like 70 meters long.

P: The artwork was ordered by William's half-brother, but we aren't sure who actually made it. It was believed that a certain queen, Matilda, was the main embroiderer, but modern researchers have rejected this idea. Most of them now believe that the work was done by a group of female embroiderers. One researcher has suggested that the tapestry was created in a professional embroidery workshop by both men and women, but that's unlikely, because there's no evidence that European men engaged in embroidery at that time.