The Lady and the Unicorn
The Lady and the Unicorn
Author: Tracy Chevalier
Desc: 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 hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn but the story behind their making is unknown—until now. Paris 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 house—mother and daughter servant and 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—his finest most intricate work—on time for his exacting French client. The results change all their lives—lives that 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—an extraordinary story exquisitely told.