International studio (55.1915)

IVhat Tale does this Tapestry Tell?

That the figures shown in the tapestry are
clothed is due to the fact that probably every
figure is intended as a portrait. They are given
the clothes they wear—not turbans—and there is
no authority in the Bible for imagining that Bath-
sheba was naked when David saw her. The
Bible says: “He saw a woman washing herself.”
The mediaeval artists sometimes represented Bath-
sheba naked and sometimes clothed. The subject
was frequently represented; and I believe in a
great many, if not in the majority of instances, she
was shown partly clothed; and this is so in early
manuscript books of devotion and especially in the
first printed Books of Hours and printed Bibles.
For example, in Martin Luther’s Bible, as pub-
lished by Hans Lufft (1557), Bath-sheba is seen
fully clothed, by the side of a brook, washing her
feet. A Norman castle is in the background.
In Queen Mary’s Psalter (Royal Manuscript
2 B VII) Bath-sheba is clothed, while David is in
an English castle of the late thirteenth century!
The artist who designed the tapestry which is
the subject of this article, clothed Bath-sheba
because of the manifest impropriety of exhibiting
a naked portrait.
Mr. de Kay points out that there are “no sol-
diers ” shown in the tapestry and that the crowned
figure is not David. Well, I can only say that,


LAMENTATION OF DAVID


DAVID PLAYING ON THE HARP

according to the Bible, David at the time had
“sent Joab” and the soldiers to battle, while he
“tarried still at Jerusalem.” David needed no
soldiers to help him watch a woman wash herself.
Mr. de Kay points out that David has no “harp.”
He needed none while engaged in the occupation
represented. He probably wanted to see rather
than be seen or heard. He was not serenading
Bath-sheba but watching her wash. The mediaeval
artist often showed David with a harp, it is true,
but this was because David was ecclesiastically
most noted for “praising the Lord with psalms.”
When the artist represented him in other occupa-
tions, in battle, for instance, the harp was left out,
and it is hardly to be expected that the artist
would draw David with a harp while watching a
woman wash.
There is, for example, David Praying, German
work of the late fifteenth century. He has the
crown and ermine but no harp. The reason he is
so represented is because he is praying, not singing.
There is also David Praying, the work of a
French artist of the early fifteenth century, taken
from a dainty little Book of Hours formerly
belonging to Queen Joanna, the daughter of
Charles the Bad, and who first married the Duke
of Brittany and afterward Henry IV of England.
Note in the background the building in the
French style of the fifteenth century. There is no
harp, because David is praying.
Mr. de Kay further points out that if the tapes-
try represented David and Bath-sheba, the king
“would have been on the roof of his palace, as the
Bible says.” I cannot well understand how he
can advance this argument, because rare, indeed,

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