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 … 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.
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While I enjoyed learning details of the weaving of the Cluny tapestries, I did not find the characters as intriguing as those in “The Girl with the Pearl Earring.”
The constant change of people speaking kind of disrupted the story. It was really a disappointing book.
fun
Superb writing takes us into the creation of great art.
This novel had a personal attraction for me. I lived in Belgium and bought a replica of this tapestry 40 years ago. Learning about the story behind the picture, and how the tapestry was made was really interesting to me. I also liked reading about the lives of people in this place and time. It is a well constructed novel.
The book means so much more if you have seen these tapestries.
Not for me. Put it down after a few chapters.
A thin plot with week characterization. Not one character I cared about. I did enjoy learning something about medieval tapestry weaving.