The Lady And The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

Eventually, the lovelorn Nicolas (who ends up modeling the lady in the tapestries on Claude) is sent off himself, to Brussels, to collaborate with master weaver Georges de la Chapelle. The artistic temperament’s licenses are not widely condoned in medieval France, however, and Genevieve quickly puts the passionate Claude under lock and key and threatens to marry Nicolas off to her plain lady-in-waiting, Beatrice. That’s easy work for Nicolas, a thoroughgoing cad who has already impregnated one of the maids in the Le Viste household and soon sets off in shameless pursuit of Jean’s beautiful daughter Claude. Here, he originally requests works depicting the Battle of Nancy, but his wife, the pious and strong-willed Genevieve de Nanterre, conspires with Nicolas to change the subject to an allegorical representation of a lady seducing a unicorn. An ambitious social climber, Jean was eager to make a name for himself as a patron of the arts. 767, etc.) steps in to supply a history, envisioning one Nicolas des Innocents, a Parisian miniaturist of the 14th century, as the one commissioned by Jean Le Viste to create a set of hangings for a townhouse on the rue du Four. Art historians speculate (based on the style and the coat of arms displayed prominently throughout) that the tapestries were woven around 1500 for the Le Viste family, but little else is known about them with any certainty. In the Cluny Museum in Paris hang six tapestries depicting a lady and a unicorn.

A delightful historical imagines the creation of the most famous medieval tapestries ever woven.

The Lady And The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier