After Nicolas des Innocents is commissioned to design six unicorn tapestries, many lives are changed forever.

I very much enjoyed this reimagining of how the medieval unicorn tapestries that currently hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris were commissioned and created. Currently a miniaturist portraitist, Nicolas learns the fine art of weaving from master weaver Georges de la Chapelle, and I loved learning about the process along with him. While there, Nicolas meets Georges' family including daughter, Alienor, who was born blind. Unable to weave, Alienor instead has developed very unique talents becoming invaluable to the family business. She was definitely my favorite character (much more than the spoiled Claude who is a nobleman's daughter crushing on Nicolas) but much to my surprise, Nicolas soon became a close second as his character matured from a skirt-chasing rogue to a more caring man and artist. If you love learning about art, then I'd highly recommend this lovely tale woven by such a talented author.

Location: 1490 Paris, France and Brussels, Belgium

I read and adored Girl with a Pearl Earring some years ago, and I always meant to try other historical fictions by Tracy Chevalier. However, The Lady and the Unicorn was just all right for me.

The story was interesting, the setting was well done and the many informations about the creation of a tapestry were very informative and fascinating. However, I really didn't connect with any of the characters. The only one I genuinely liked was Alienor, but she wasn't overly present in the story, while I had a passionate dislike of Nicolas and Claude, who instead were the main characters.
It's a pity, because I think that with a different cast of characters I would have enjoyed the story a lot more.

You can tell from the first few pages that the author really did her homework on the history of tapestries. Everything is very well-documented, from how exactly a tapestry was made to the usual way a Belgian workshop was organized and run. (The best medieval workshops for tapestries were in Belgium).

It's lovely that Tracy Chevalier thought of a way to explain the famous unicorn tapestries in Cluny and how they came to be. Her knowledge of the art world in Paris and how everything was commissioned is also impressive.

I also appreciated a sense of realism regarding the characters and their relations. The motif of the lady and the unicorn may be one of the most poetic themes in the world, but most of the times the characters in the book are decidedly prosaic. The only thing I could wish for more was that the ending was less neatly rounded off (the final twist was a bit unnecessary, in my opinion).

Dreh- und Angelpunkt dieses historischen Romans sind die Wandteppiche "Dame mit dem Einhorn", die man heute noch im Pariser Museum Cluny bewundern kann. Die Geschichte konzentriert sich dabei ganz auf die (vermuteten) zwei Jahre ihres Entstehens von 1490 bis 1492 in Paris und Brüssel. Tracey Chevalier ist es wirklich gelungen, die spätmittelalterliche Welt des adligen Pariser Auftraggebers und vor allem die Werkstatt des Brüssler Wirkers, also des Tapisserieherstellers, zum Leben zu erwecken, indem sie die Geschichte aus der Perspektive der Beteiligten erzählen lässt. So kommen der Maler, Frau und Tochter des Auftraggebers, alle Familienmitglieder der Wirkerwerkstatt zu Wort. Mit diesem häufigen Perspektivenwechsel hat sich Chevalier in andere Hinsicht jedoch übernommen. Sie hat es nicht geschafft, jeder Stimme eine unverwechselbare Qualität zu geben und sie deutlich von den anderen zu unterscheiden. Nur Kapitelüberschriften verhindern, dass man als Leser durcheinander kommt. Beim Lesen wird schnell deutlich, dass die Charaktere und Handlung völlig der Absicht untergeordnet sind, eine plausible Entstehungsgeschichte der Tapisserien zu liefern. Mir selbst hat der Roman gefallen, weil ich auf die Rekonstruktion der Entstehungsgeschichte neugierig war und ein Vorstellung von der aufreibenden Arbeit eines spätmittelalterlichen Handwerkers bekommen habe. Wer allerdings nach einer überzeugenden Handlung und komplexen Charakteren sucht, sollte lieber zu einem anderen Roman greifen.

Brīnišķīgs stāsts par mākslas darba tapšanu un kaislībām, kas neizbēgami raisās tā radīšanas procesā.

Weaving, tapestries, and unicorns – by an author I enjoyed previously. What could go wrong? Not everything, fortunately, but … parts of the story and many of the characters came up lacking. I learned things about weaving tapestries, however, so not a complete loss.

A quote that caught my eye

Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wines. Their work is not obvious—all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren’t there, there would be no tapestry. (113)

In the same vein as her book Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Lady and the Unicorn is a fictional account of the story surrounding the creation of the famed Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, now housed at the Musee national du Moyen-Age (Musee Cluny) in Paris. This topic was particularly intriguing to me, since I'd seen the tapestries in person back in 2001.

While the book provides a really interesting up-close look at the design and weaving processes, I could have done with out the rest of the story, which was fairly bawdy. I didn't really care about the characters—just the tapestries. :D It's a good read if you want to find out how it was done (keeping in mind that it's not really a history book) and don't mind the bawdiness, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it to my mother.


...who of course, then received the book as a gift from a friend and read it anyway. Go figure.

This novel provides a fictionalized history of the Unicorn tapestries, real works of art that are now on display in the Musée de Cluny. Very little is known of their creation and Tracy Chevalier has imagined the story of why and how they were made. They were commissioned by the Le Viste family around the year 1500. Chevalier does an admirable job of crafting a convincing historical fiction of the commission, design, cartooning, weaving, and hanging. The story is told by a variety of voices connected with the project.

Jean Le Viste commissions Nicholas des Innocents, a portrait artist, to design tapestries for his ballroom. At first, he asks for battle scenes, but Nicholas talks him into different subject matter based upon a conversation with Jean’s wife. Nicholas is a womanizer, and this story gets rather bawdy in describing his amorous pursuits. Nicholas attempts to seduce Le Viste’s daughter, and, later, the blind daughter of the Brussels tapestry weaver.

The writing is descriptive and fits with the historical time period. It is educational in terms of the steps required to produce a tapestry. Nicholas is a talented rogue, and it is easy to dislike him (as I am sure the author intends). Recommended to those who enjoy historical fiction about real works of art. I can also recommend Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures and The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

Was hoping to enjoy The Lady and the Unicorn after reading Burning Bright a few years earlier, which is, to be honest, far superior to this. After the action moves away from the Le Viste family, it kind of goes downhill from there. Nicholas is thoroughly unlikeable as a character (whether this was meant to be deliberate or not, I couldn't tell). The only interesting person was Genevieve de Nanterre. Also, what's the deal with Chevalier missing out on the chance to use Jean Le Viste's narrative voice? He is the reason the tapestry is made at all, but we only get a few glimpses of him being little more than a stereotype (of the "I'm-so-damn-important-that-I'll-blame-my-lack-of-an-heir-on-my-wife-simply-because-no-one-will-dare-argue-with-me" variety) and all round bastard. Aside from all this, the writing is clunky. Nicholas leers after any woman with a pulse (including fourteen year old girls) and comes out with cringeworthy lines such as "The sight of her tongue made me hard. I wanted to plough her" and "Come closer, my dear, and see my plums. Squeeze them." Had the writing been less like a Mills & Boon novel it could have just about saved this book. Oh, well. I'm hoping Remarkable Creatures is going to turn out better.

This is my favorite book of Chevalier's next to the Girl with a Pearl Earring... I loved stepping into the medieval setting and learning the intricacies of creating those gorgeous tapestries I've seen hanging in the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The characters are great, and the story line has less tragedy, which I preferred.

I am impressed. I never thought this book would be as lovely as Girl with a Pearl Earring: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...! First let me just explain that this is a book of historical fiction. In the Museé National du Moyen-Age we can today see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. They are six tapestries, each representing one of our five senses:
sight, sound, smell, touch, taste and the sixth, that one is known as Á Mon Seul Désir, for these words are found woven there. In English the translation would be: my one, sole desire. Think about those words in conjunction with the theme of the other tapestries and imagine what they might mean. In any case, the tapestries and this book must be about seduction. Or is it about forgoing sensual pleasures? One cannot see if the women is putting in or taking out the jewels.

Little is known of these wool and silk tapestries except that they were woven at the end of the 1400s, probably in Flanders. They were commissioned by the Le Visté family, since the banner is visible in all six of the tapestries. Tracy Chevalier weaves a credible story about these tapestries: Jean Le Visté, a fifteenth-century nobleman, close to the French King Charles VII, commissions Nicolas des Innocents, a talented miniaturist, tantalized by the charms of several beautiful women - maids, ladies-in-waiting and even Jean Le Visté’s daughter and wife, too. The tapestries are woven in Brussels by the renown weaver Georges de la Chapelle. The story captures the lives and times of noblemen and the guilds’ craftsmen living in Brussels and Paris at the end of the 1400s.

Tracy Chevalier, the author, has done her homework. She knows these cities, the craftsmen and these times – down to the smallest details. She knows that in Brussels it is the early summer sun that shines the hottest:

I sat back on my heels and raised my face to the sun. Early summer is good for sun, as it is directly overhead for longer during the day. I have always loved heat, though not from the fire. Fires scare me. I have singed my skirts too often by the fire.

‘Will you pick me a strawberry, Mademoiselle?’ Nicolas asked. ‘I have a thirst.’

‘They’re not ripe yet,’ I snapped. I had meant to sound pleasant but he made me feel strange. And he was talking too loudly. People often do when they discover I am blind….. (pages 110-111: a short interchange of words between Nicolas and Aliénor de la Chapelle, the pretty, but blind daughter of Geroges de la Chapelle)

Already we know by 100 pages that Nicolas has impregnated a maid in Paris, been under a table doing naughty things with fourteen-year-old Claude, the daughter of Jean Le Visté, and flirted with her mother, Geneviève de Nanterre. What more mischief and indeed with whom will we find Nicolas? Each character has a clear identity. There is rivalry between mother and daughter; there is jealousy and love too. Each of the women came alive. There is Aliénor the blind girl. There is Christine du Sablon, the wife of Georges and mother of Aliénor. Each of the women and also the men relate the events. Different chapters relate different characters’ thoughts. Each of the individuals has a different perspective. Each has their own problems, personality and standing and thus they cannot have the same view. I loved the blind girl’s thoughts. I also appreciated the two different mother daughter relationships. For me, there was a lot to consider. I love the playful seduction scenes. I love the authenticity of the descriptions. I know Brussels and the author describes the city perfectly. The details are interwoven into the tale of families. There is a wife that has given birth to only three daughters, and that is quite a failing when it is a son that is needed to carry on the family name. This novel is about not only the tapestries but also about women, several very different women. So while we learn history about these tapestries and times we also delve into familiar family relationships. The book is about rivalry between mothers and daughters, lost love between a husband and wife and about the life of women as they age. What makes it wonderful to read is the author’s ability to evoke different places and characters convincingly.

Just like Tracy Chevalier’s novel Girl with a Pearl Earring, the story features real works of art, namely six tapestries currently in the Musee de Cluny, now Musee de Moyens Age.

Set in 15th Century Paris, The Lady and the Unicorn centres around Nicholas des Innocents, a painter commissioned by the boorish, nouveau-riche Jean le Viste to create the design for a tapestry. This is a vanity project to impress the nobles at court, where coats of arms and the unlikely exploits of Jean le Viste in a recent battle will be immortalised.

While Jean wants battles and blood, his noble wife, Genevieve manages to convince Nicholas and eventually Jean, to feature unicorns and maidens. This is much more to Nicholas’ taste. He is poorly named; he’s not innocent at all and the story of the unicorn and the maiden is one he uses often to seduce women. He’s promiscuous and unfeeling for the women he ‘ploughs’. We know this from his encounter with a servant on the way to the house of Jean le Viste, who he’s previously seduced, pregnant and starting to show. The daughter she eventually gives birth to plays an interesting part in the story that Tracy Chevalier weaves along with the tapestry.

While getting the design agreed, Nicholas comes across Claude, the eldest daughter of the house and immediately desires her. and Claude immediately goes on his hot list of women to bed. As a teenager on the verge of sexual awakening, Claude is fascinated by the lecherous Nicholas and the desire between them drives much of the action in the novel. Nicholas first sees the tapestry as a job, and then as a method of continuing to see Claude.

The tapestry takes Nicholas to Brussels, where he encounters Alienor, the daughter of the weaver commissioned to produce it, another woman he seduces. But the tapestry also changes the way that Nicholas sees women, turning them into creatures that exist outside of his personal desire.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the characters in the story, and like a rich tapestry, the book illuminates each thread to creat the whole. Chevalier is precise in her use of historical detail and it shines through every section of the novel, throwing light on life, work and the place of women in the 1400s.

It’s not any kind of typical romance and the sex and desire is a little…blunt, but the way in which the story emerges is masterly. I enjoyed it and would recommend.