Paris, 1490. An aspiring nobleman commissions charismatic artist Nicolas des Innocents to design a series of battle tapestries. Instead of soldiers and bloody battlefields, Nicolas creates a seductive world of ladies, unicorns, flowers, and the five senses, using as his muses the women in the house. In Belgium, as his designs spring to life in the weavers’ studio, Nicolas is inspired once more by the master weaver’s wife and daughter. The results change all their lives — lives that have been captured in medieval tapestries that still tantalize us today.
Inspiration
When I was a teenager I had a unicorn craze, the way other girls had horse crazes. I owned unicorn books, posters, stickers, jewelry. In one of the books were illustrations of the six medieval Lady and the Unicorn tapestries that hang in the Museum of the Middle Ages (aka Cluny Museum) in Paris. They are beautiful, powerful, mysterious.
Years later I read an article about the tapestries, and this time I noted all the unanswered questions surrounding them. Whom were they were made for, and when, and where, and why? I was particularly taken with the women depicted, wondering whether their real lives were as calm and tranquil as they appear in cloth. I was also intrigued by the layers of symbolic meaning: the lady’s seduction of the unicorn, her spirituality, the five senses. How did the people designing and making the tapestries weave together such different interpretations? By writing a novel about them, I tried to answer some of these questions.
Reviews
With great insight, invention and a remarkable eye for detail, Chevalier breathes life into artists and artisans, their subjects and surroundings and, most important, their magnificent creations. —Washington Post
Chevalier effectively imagines and translates a reality that feeds the creation of great art. Whether the story is real never comes under consideration; it is the combined magic of good storytelling and masterpiece art that makes The Lady and the Unicorn a memorable work. —Denver Post
Chevalier is too careful and thoughtful a writer to paint by numbers. Although the premise of The Lady and the Unicorn superficially resembles that of Girl with a Pearl Earring, the more important similarity lies in their author's ability to populate a period setting with subtly rendered, surprisingly complex characters. —New York Times
On the academic front, here is the old Chevalier, exact and guarded, accurate and self-contained…On the erotic front, she positively explodes, the shy smiles of Pearl Earring replaced by a terrific torrent of carnal imagery, every sense invoked and appetite exploited. —Guardian
The genuine drama Chevalier orchestrates as the weavers race to complete the tapestries, and the deft way she herself weaves together each separate story strand, results in a work of genuine power and beauty. —Publishers Weekly
A compelling and enormously enjoyable work, with characters that would not have been out of place in the frank and bawdy tales of Boccaccio…It has proved to me that the historical novel is still alive, well and thriving. —Evening Standard
