THE OTTO TAPESTRY by Libby Clay

THE OTTO TAPESTRY

by Libby Clay

We have been watching with interest as weavers duplicate the little greyhound from the lower central portion of the Otto III tapestry (30.1). Creating him is slow, just as weaving the large tapestry took at least four months. While one weaver at a time works on the dog in our Fountain Court,  there were probably four weavers creating the entire tapestry, weaving in wool and silk from the side, and using the same low warp method we see in the weaving of the dog.

This tapestry has many stories to tell. It once hung in the great Knole House in England. Did its owners know the story it told of a Saxon emperor who ruled almost five hundred years earlier? Godfrey of Viterbo, a twelfth-century historian, in his Pantheon, told of the difficult but just judgment rendered by the young king. As the label tells us, Otto's wife, Margaret of Aragon, fell in love with a married man.  He was faithful to his wife, however, and spurned her—an audacious act. The irate queen told her husband that the man had raped her. Otto, according to the story, had the man beheaded.

The tapestry shows the widow of the fatally-wronged man in court, pleading her husband's innocence. On looking closely, you can see her outstretched hands. She has passed the test for guilt or innocence by trial by ordeal—in her case by thrusting her hands into fire. The fire did not burn her, and she is demonstrating her un-singed hands, and thus her veracity. This is the dramatic moment when the king and court realize that the queen has caused the death of an innocent man. Otto's punishment is swift...he has Margaret burned at the stake.

Trial by jury did not come into use until the thirteenth century. Before that, trial by ordeal was the rule.  The usual method was to bind the accused hand and foot and toss him or her into a lake or river. People believed that water was a pure substance and would reject anything foul or unclean.  Therefore, if the person on trial sank, the water was accepting him, and he or she was innocent. If he rose to the top, the water was rejecting him, and it was obvious that he was guilty. Trial by fire, such as the widow had undergone, was another way of judging innocence or guilt. Administrators may have known that this was not a fair way of determining justice, but they did not come up with a better solution until some three hundred years after Otto's ruling.

Why a tapestry about a judgment?  It is known that, around the middle of the fifteenth century, Flemish officials (and this tapestry is of Flemish weave) commissioned paintings

of famous judgments to be hung in their town halls. These would serve as a warning to judges and, by this time, juries, to render just verdicts; they would also remind criminals that crimes would be punished. Such renowned painters as Roger van der Weyden created judgment paintings, and it is known that four paintings of The Justice of Emperor Otto III were commissioned from Dieric Bouts. He completed one painting and a portion of a second before his death.

Who was Otto III? In a serendipitous way, his story ties in with the Artemisia tapestries. Otto's grandfather, Otto I, the Great, was intent on uniting Germany and reviving Charlemagne's West Roman Empire. He was a powerful king who had himself crowned by Pope John XII in 962. Otto I arranged the marriage of his son, Otto II, to a Byzantine princess, Theophano. She brought all the opulent trappings of the Byzantine court with her, as well as a taste for art and culture.  When her husband died, she became regent for their son, Otto III, as did Catherine de' Medici for her sons, and chose the best monk scholars of the time as tutors for him. Otto III was the last of the Ottonians, for he died without an heir, and the throne passed to a cousin, much as the Bourbon throne passed to Henry of Navarre at the death of  Henry III.

How did the tapestry come to the Memorial Art Gallery?  In 1456 Thomas Bourchier, the Archbishop of Canterbury, purchased the great Tudor estate of Knole House in Kent, England. The Otto tapestry was among the early furnishings, and it was displayed in either the chapel or the organ room.  Knole house remained the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury until the time of the Reformation, when it was deeded to the crown. Elizabeth I granted the estate to her cousin Thomas Sackville, First Earl of Dorset, and the estate has been in the possession of the family ever since.

Sometime in the early twentieth century, this tapestry and another were discovered stored in barrels in Knole House. They were sold to J. P. Morgan, and in 1923, Morgan offered them for sale through a New York auction house.  MAG's great benefactor James Sibley Watson bought the Otto tapestry and presented it to the Gallery in 1930. (The other tapestry, a religious subject, went to Boston.) So our Otto tapestry has the distinction of a known provenance, and has left us only twice: once to be cleaned and once to have the left and lower borders (chewed by rats) re-woven in France.

Source: Curatorial files.