The Bayeux tapestry is so fragile that transporting it dangers irreparable injury, French consultants have mentioned, as a petition urging Emmanuel Macron to reverse a “catastrophic” resolution to mortgage the distinctive embroidery to Britain handed 60,000 signatures.
France’s president declared in July that the practically 1,000-year-old, 70-metre-long wool-on-linen art work, which depicts William the Conqueror’s victory over King Harold II of England at Hastings in 1066, would cross the Channel subsequent yr.
For 9 months from September 2026, it is because of be on show on the British Museum, whose director, Nicholas Cullinan, has known as it “probably the most essential and distinctive cultural artefacts on this planet”, symbolic of a millennium of shared historical past between Britain and France.
French conservators who’ve labored on the embroidery, nevertheless, say it’s so fragile as to be primarily untransportable, and the organiser of a marketing campaign towards the mortgage argues Macron has ignored near-unanimous knowledgeable recommendation for a grand political gesture.
“I’m not towards the mortgage of cultural artefacts and I’ve all the time preferred the UK,” mentioned Didier Rykner, the editorial director of La Tribune de l’Art, an artwork information web site, whose month-old petition against the loan has been signed by practically 62,000 folks.
“However it is a purely political resolution. Right here is a rare murals, a completely distinctive historic doc, an artefact with out equal anyplace – and which knowledgeable opinion agrees, overwhelmingly, can’t journey. It’s not sophisticated.”
Macron first urged lending the Bayeux tapestry to the UK – as beforehand requested by London, and rejected by Paris, for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and, in 1966, for the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings – in 2018.
Conceived because the kind of momentous cultural supply that may assist maintain British ties to the continent even because it was making ready to stop the EU, the plan foundered as cross-Channel relations soured through the bitter Brexit negotiations and their aftermath.
The concept was resurrected as relations regularly improved after Boris Johnson and Liz Truss left Downing St, and accelerated with Keir Starmer’s EU “reset”. French officers say King Charles was additionally instrumental and personally “very supportive” of the plan.
However the mortgage settlement to have fun cross-Channel reconciliation – which may even contain French museums displaying artefacts from the Anglo-Saxon burial website Sutton Hoo, and the Lewis Chessmen – ignores many years of warnings concerning the state of the tapestry.
Housed since 1983 in a purpose-built museum in Bayeux as a consequence of shut subsequent month for a serious two-year renovation, the material has been severely weakened by age but additionally, consultants say, by being displayed suspended from a rail, slightly than laid out flat.
Among the most damning arguments towards the plan have come from curators and restorers who’ve labored or are engaged on the tapestry, 5 of whom have informed Rykner – on situation of anonymity – of their disbelief and concern.
Exactly as a result of the tapestry was thought of too fragile to maneuver far, advanced plans were already under way to take away it from show and retailer it through the museum’s rebuilding work, with a full restoration to observe as soon as it was returned.
“We fell off our chairs once we heard,” mentioned one conservator. “It’s the other of all we had ready for.”
Any motion at all the canvas, in a state of “absolute fragility”, was “fraught with threat, an extremely delicate operation”, mentioned one other.
Now the embroidery is ready to be carried over a distance of probably greater than 500km (310 miles) “in its most fragile state, with its stabilising lining already eliminated, and earlier than its restoration”, mentioned a 3rd.
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All emphasised that the 1000’s of current weak spots could be strained, with each motion risking tears, and it appeared nearly not possible that what must be a wholly new system of transporting the tapestry might be designed in time.
“It’s discrediting our occupation,” one mentioned. “Not listening to us is like saying we’re ineffective.” A uncommon conservator to talk publicly, Thalia Bajon Bouzid, mentioned any injury could be irreversible: “Tears wouldn’t be repaired, for causes of authenticity.”
The curators’ fears echo a number of earlier knowledgeable warnings. As early as 2018, Antoine Verney, the chief curator on the Bayeux Museum, mentioned he “couldn’t conceive” of it being moved far.
A report by eight vintage textile consultants in 2020 beneficial a full restoration, figuring out 24,204 stains, 16,445 creases, 9,646 deficiencies and 30 “non-stabilised” tears, and a pre-restoration research in 2021 “suggested strongly towards transporting the tapestry over an extended distance (for greater than an hour)”.
That research added: “The longer the timeframe for micro-alterations to happen, the better the danger that seen and irreversible alterations will seem”, particularly since “no vibration-absorption system at the moment exists that may get rid of all threat throughout transportation”.
Yet one more evaluation the next yr reached a lot the identical conclusion, according to Le Monde – however stays confidential besides to corporations submitting tenders for a full feasibility research into the tapestry’s proposed removing to London, Rykner mentioned.
Up to now, the French authorities has barely acknowledged the consultants’ considerations. Macron went out of his technique to dismiss them, saying in July that France had “discovered one of the best consultants of the world to clarify in good element” why the mortgage “was not possible”, however “we determined” in any other case.
Philippe Bélaval, the president’s particular adviser on the undertaking, has insisted the tapestry is “completely not untransportable”, referring to an “extraordinarily exact” – however confidential – report from early this yr detailing what precautions should be taken.
“Enjoying with phrases,” mentioned Rykner. “The transport had already been determined, so it was not the job of this report – about which we all know strictly nothing – to argue towards it. Any art work is transportable. The query is, in what situation will it arrive?”
The very fact of the matter, Rykner mentioned, was that Macron, famously enamoured of each the grand theatrical gesture and making his personal choices, had positioned politics over the conservation of an exceptionally susceptible piece of cultural heritage.
One of many tender documents related to the loan, Rykner mentioned, contained what was most likely a mistake, however a revealing one: “The mortgage of the Bayeux tapestry has been granted”, it reads, “by the President of the Republic, proprietor of the work …”
Within the seventeenth century, Louis XIV, the Solar King, apocryphally mentioned: ‘“L’état, c’est moi” (“I’m the state.”) This, Rykner mentioned, was a case of “‘La tapisserie, c’est moi.’ It’s outrageous, and persons are beginning to see why it should be stopped.”
