• .

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  • This book provides a fascinating look at tapestry making at the end of the 13th century. It is told by numerous character perspectives and all of the chapters are very strong. I became quite attached to these individuals and I wish we could have seen more of them! The theme of the novel is desire an ... Continue

    This book provides a fascinating look at tapestry making at the end of the 13th century. It is told by numerous character perspectives and all of the chapters are very strong. I became quite attached to these individuals and I wish we could have seen more of them! The theme of the novel is desire and Chevalier cleverly weaves her plot into the famous tapestries, making you believe that this is how it actually happened.

    

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• ― MoirneStark said on Aug 25, 2008 | Add your feedback

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.

• britishmedievalfiction1961-presentamerican lithistorical fiction