The Lady and the Unicorn

A tour de force of history and imagination, The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalier's answer to the mystery behind one of the art world's great masterpieces - a set of bewitching medieval tapestries that today hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making has always been unclear.

Chevalier offers us an enthralling version of her own. In Paris, in 1490, a shrewd French nobleman commissions six lavish tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. He hires the charismatic, arrogant, sublimely talented Nicolas des Innocents to design them. Nicolas creates havoc among the women in the household (dallying in turn with mother, daughter, servant, and show more lady-in-waiting) before taking his designs north to the Brussels workshop where the tapestries are to be woven. There, master weaver Georges de la Chapelle risks everything he has to finish the tapestries (which he acknowledges will be the finest and most intricate works of his career) by the tight deadline set by his exacting French client.

The results change all their lives ( though the strands of all those lives have been captured in the tapestries, for those who know where to look).

In The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier weaves fact and fiction into a beautiful, timeless, and intriguing literary tapestry to offer the reader an extraordinary story exquisitely told. show less

Based on the description on the back of this book, I expected an elegantly written, cozy, sophisticated, intriguing, engrossing Medievalish fantasy. What I got was a badly written, tawdry romance filled with cheesy innuendos that entirely lacked depth. I don't mind a tawdry romance, but 1) it was completely at odds with how this book is touted so I wasn't prepared for it and 2) even the least sophisticated romance I've read has never come close to this level of groan-worthy, eye-rolling text. To this day I am still not sure what the author was trying to accomplish, aside from making me guffaw.

Tracy Chevalier's tale of artistic creation and late-medieval amours, The Lady and the Unicorn is a subtle study in social power and the conflicts between love and duty. Nicolas des Innocents has been commissioned by the Parisian nobleman Jean Le Viste to design a series of large tapestries for his great hall (in real life, the famous Lady and the Unicorn cycle, now in Paris's Musee National du Moyen-Age Thermes de Cluny). While Nicolas is measuring the walls, he meets a beautiful girl who turns out to be Jean Le Viste's daughter. Their passion is impossible for their world--so forbidden, given their class differences, that its only avenue of expression turns out to be those magnificent tapestries. The historical evidence on which this show more story is based is slight enough to allow the full play of Chevalier's imagination in this cleverly woven tale. show less

If any book can be described as a sumptuous feast for the senses, it is this book. Tracy Chevalier's novel transports the reader into 15th Century Europe and into the lives of the people involved with the creation of the Le Viste family's tapestries. I was personally fascinated by the women of this story, and the choices they were forced to make because of society's expectations and limitations.

Once again Tracy Chevalier shows she can write about art in a way that makes you not only want to view the topic of her book but helps you to understand and appreciate it. The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are the subject of this book. There was an intense discussion of the oppression of women, and all of the lower classes in the 15th century. I'm always amazed when I can like a book and thoroughly dislike its main characters. Both the artist and the young girl about whom he obsesses are very deficient in character. The only people with whom the reader has any sympathy are the artisans, and they bring the tapestries to life. I would be tempted to overlook the mille-fleurs, but Chevalier shows just how much thought was put into placing show more the right flowers in these tapestries that exemplify the 5 senses touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell while they also show the seduction of an innocent and the accumulation or rejection of worldly goods. It seems Chevalier is a master of any subject she pursues. show less

A fictionalized account of the weaving of the Unicorn tapestries that are now in the Museum at Cluny, France, a series of six depicting the romancing of a unicorn by a lady. Woven through the story of their creation are the stories of the wife and daughter of the wealthy aristocrat who commissions them, Jean LeViste, and their life – mostly in Paris – and the lives of the weaver, Georges De La Chapelle, his wife Christine, their blind daughter Alienor in Brussels as they work on the creation of the tapestries. Appearing in both locations is the talented artist, Nicolas Des Innocents, a painter and the creator of the concept of the Unicorn Tapestries, who is less than admirable at the beginning of the story. The individual chapters show more are all told in first person narratives by different characters.

Nicolas beds whatever girl he is able to work into the horizontal and has no feeling for them afterward. At the very beginning, he encounters a servant girl in the LeViste household who is in danger of losing her place because he has impregnated her. His idea of shouldering responsibility is to toss a few coins her way. Doubtless, this is the way such matters were usually handled during the 15th/16th century when servant girls found themselves in a fix, but it does not help me to like Nicolas. He takes a liking to the eldest daughter of his patron and plans to seduce her – an easy task, for the girl’s hormones are raging – but never gets the chance. Even later on when Nicolas travels to Brussels to help with execution of the tapestries he is arrogant and dismissive both of the work the weavers do and of Brussels itself. Fortunately, time and circumstances do something toward redeeming Nicolas in my eyes, but Chevalier does not try to impose our standards upon him, nor for that matter upon any of the other characters. Their time and place dictate the way their stories turn out and I like that.

I liked the chapters concerning Genevieve and Claude LeViste, the mother and eldest daughter of Jean’s household well enough, but I truly liked the ones concerning the Chapelle family in Brussels – in particular the blind Alienor – the best. Poor Alienor is being pursued by the woad-maker (woad is a blue dye), Jaques LeBoeuf, who smells revoltingly – and eternally - of sheep piss – the down side of his trade. He wants to marry her and badgers her parents to agree to it. They do not want to make Alienor unhappy, but after all she is damaged and LeBoeuf being their source for woad – well, business is business. But not to worry. Alienor has a solution to her problem.

I think I have read reviews somewhere where the reviewer found the copious descriptions of how the tapestries were woven tedious, but I did not find that they took away from my enjoyment of the book. This book is not the same as Girl With A Pearl Earring, but I liked it just as well. show less

A ravishing fictional account of the making of the famous French tapestries. I couldn't put this one down. Chevalier's simple, elegant prose fits this literary conjecture perfectly. Especially illuminating was the spotlight put on the very few life choices women had back in the 15th century. I enjoyed seeing how all of the main female characters were eventually represented in the tapestries themselves. A quick, engrossing read.