If you think you wouldn't raise your skirts for a rakish legend about the purifying powers of a unicorn's horn, then maybe you aren't a 15th-century serving girl under the sway of a velvet-tongued court painter of ill repute. In keeping with her bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring, and its Edwardian-era follow-up, Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier's tale of artistic creation and late-medieval amours, The Lady and the Unicorn is a subtle study in social power, and the conflicts between love and duty. Nicolas des Innocents has been commissioned by the Parisian nobleman Jean Le Viste to design a series of large tapestries for his great hall (in real life, the famous Lady and the Unicorn cycle, now in Paris's Musee National du Moyen-Age Thermes de Cluny). While Nicolas is measuring the walls, he meets a beautiful girl who turns out to be Jean Le Viste's daughter. Their passion is impossible for their world--so forbidden, given their class differences, that its only avenue of expression turns out to be those magnificent tapestries. The historical evidence on which this story is based is slight enough to allow the full play of Chevalier's imagination in this cleverly woven tale. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
Chevalier, whose bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring showed how a picture can inspire thousands of words, yokes her limpid, quietly enthralling storytelling to the six Lady and the Unicorn tapestries that hang in the Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris. As with her Vermeer novel, she takes full creative advantage of the mystery that shrouds an extraordinary collaborative work of art. Building on the little that is known or surmised - in this case that the tapestries were most likely commissioned by the French noble Jean Le Viste and made in a workshop in Brussels at the end of the 15th century - she imagines her way into a lost world. We are introduced to Nicholas des Innocents, the handsome, irrepressibly seductive artist who designed the works for the cold Le Viste, a rich, grim social climber who bought his way into the nobility and cares more about impressing the king and his court than pleasing the wife who has disappointed him by bearing three girls and no sons. Le Viste's wife, Genevieve, tells Nicholas to create scenes with a unicorn but Nicholas's love of women - and especially of Geneviève's beautiful daughter Claude - inspires the extraordinary faces and gestures of the women he depicts. A great romance unfolds. What makes the tale enthralling are the details Chevalier offers about the social customs of the time and, especially, the craft of weaving as it was practiced in Brussels. There are psychological anachronisms: would a young woman in medieval times express her pent-up frustrations by cutting herself as some teenage girls do today? Yet 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. And yes, readers will inevitably think about what a gorgeous movie this would make.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-This fanciful, engaging tale of the making of the famous unicorn tapestries is woven together as cleverly as the artworks themselves. Dynamic Nicolas des Innocents is proud of his skill as a painter and of his sexual prowess, and displays both at every opportunity. Always in need of funds, he persuades Jean Le Viste, a powerful Parisian nobleman, to commission a series of six tapestry designs of Nicolas's choosing: scenes focused on the unicorn, a fabled symbol of male virility and mysterious powers. Jean's pious wife colludes with the artist, as do her daughter and her lady-in-waiting. Nicolas courts them all. He journeys to Brussels, where his fate becomes intertwined with the family weaving the tapestries, but most of all their daughter, Alienor, whose blindness dooms her to betrothal to a brutish wool dyer. The "family" also includes the workers who assist them, one of whom, shy Philippe, secretly adores Alienor. The deadline for completion of the tapestries is moved up, and tension increases as all concentrate on the task. The major characters' reactions to their world-early 1490s France-are revealed, like the tapestries being woven, a little at a time. The French court and its aristocracy; Flemish weavers, their work ethic, and their powerful guild-all are delineated with the consummate skill Chevalier brought to Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutton, 2000).-Molly Connally, Chantilly Regional Library, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Tapestries are rarely the preferred choice of museum-goers. Neither rug nor painting, often muted, remote and incomprehensible, they are an art form only a docent could love. But Tracy Chevalier's latest novel, The Lady and the Unicorn, a vibrant story about a series of medieval tapestries, will change that perception once and for all. Chevalier invites readers to step into the richly imagined world of an actual work of art -- an invitation they would be foolish to decline, considering her success with Girl with a Pearl Earring. 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.Little is known about the six elaborate wall-hangings called the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which are displayed in the Cluny Museum in Paris. The artist, though anonymous, is presumed French. The weaving, done in the late 1400s, features the detailed background pattern of flowers and plants known as "millefleur" that was perfected in Brussels at the time. The coat-of-arms displayed throughout the work suggests the identity of its patron: the Le Viste family, social climbers who would have commissioned the tapestries to advertise their wealth, taste and prominence. In addition to being decorative and utilitarian (wall-hangings made large, drafty rooms warmer and more intimate), the tapestries tell the story of a noblewoman's fanciful pursuit of a mythological unicorn. Five of the six panels depict the senses -- smell, hearing, sight, touch and taste. The remaining one, bearing the motto "My Sole Desire," shows a woman in the ambiguous act of removing -- or putting on -- her jewelry.A scant handful of facts is the inspiration for a sumptuous behind-the-canvas tale of art, ambition and desire, as was the case with Girl with a Pearl Earring. But it is important to note that Chevalier is not simply repeating herself. A character in her new book explains the difference between a painting and a tapestry, observing that a painting is smaller and can be seen in its entirety while, with a tapestry, "You see only a part of it, and not necessarily the most important part. So no thing should stand out more than the rest, but fit together into a pattern that your eye takes pleasure in no matter where it rests." This distinction informs Chevalier's writing throughout The Lady and the Unicorn. Like a master weaver, she uses multiple narrators to tell her story, dovetailing their disparate but equally weighted points of view until the novel itself becomes a tapestry of images, ideas and emotions.The story begins in Paris in 1490, with a randy and self-absorbed young painter, Nicolas des Innocents. Because his most successful pick-up line involves an off-color story about a unicorn's horn, he is delighted when he is commissioned to design a series of tapestries combining his two main interests: women and unicorns. His patron, nouveau riche powerbroker Jean Le Viste, is blind to the familial and psychological dramas in his own household. But Nicolas, a connoisseur of the opposite sex, instantly understands the sexual longings of Claude, the teenage daughter of the house, and the frustrations of Geneviève, her emotionally parched and embittered mother. He pursues the beautiful Claude, who is equally obsessed with him, only to be blocked by Geneviève, who moves quickly to protect her daughter's virtue.Luckily, Nicolas has his work to distract him. He knows very little about the complex process of turning a painting into a tapestry. He receives his education at the hands of a family of Flemish weavers who embark on an ambitious two-year plan to complete the project. Georges de la Chapelle and his wife, Christine, run a workshop in Brussels, the weaving capital of the world. Assisted by their children and a few craftsmen, they transform mountains of dyed wool into magnificent weavings. Their household, like Jean Le Viste's, is a hotbed of domestic drama. Here, as in Paris, Nicolas is a catalyst for change. There is an urgency to Chevalier's characters and their situations -- the artist desperate to make a name for himself, the girl longing to be a woman, the mother mourning her lost youth, the housewife dreaming of a profession -- that makes this medieval world surprisingly vivid and contemporary. Yet it is no accident that Chevalier ends her story in 1492 -- the dawn of the New World -- reminding us that, as the tapestries were being hung, they and the carefully structured universe they represented were about to yield to new art forms and new social orders. With The Lady and the Unicorn, however, this long-vanished world is brought back to thrilling life. Reviewed by Deborah DavisCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From AudioFile
A new historical novel by the author of the hugely popular GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING tells the story of who inspired the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, made in France circa 1490. Unfortunately, where Vermeer comes off as a weakling and a cad in the former, Nicolas des Innocents, the latter's tapestry designer, is pompous and vulgar. It's hard to believe for a second in his artistic ability as all he seems interested in is bedding every female he comes in contact with. It's disappointing because we miss out on some presumably interesting history of tapestry weaving. It's too bad too because the production is very good. Blumenfeld and Donnelly do a superb job with what they have to work with. D.G. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The author of Girl with a Pearl Earring (2000) and Falling Angels (2001) offers a luminous tale about a set of medieval tapestries known as the Lady and the Unicorn sequence. Nicolas des Innocents, a handsome, lascivious artist, is summoned to the home of Jean Le Viste, a nobleman who wants Nicolas to design a series of battle tapestries. Jean's wife, Genevieve, persuades Nicolas to talk her husband into a softer subject: the beguilement of a unicorn by a noblewoman. Nicolas shapes the tapestries with his own vision, dedicating five of the six to the senses and using the images of Genevieve and her daughter, Claude, with whom Nicolas is smitten, for the ladies. After finishing the paintings, Nicolas travels from Paris to Brussels, where Georges de la Chapelle will weave them. At first Nicolas is standoffish and scornful of Georges but gradually comes to respect him and take an interest in his blind daughter. But Nicolas' heart lies with the unattainable Claude. Chevalier meticulously describes the complex process of creating a tapestry, from its conception to the moment it is pulled off the loom. The story she weaves is as lush as the tapestries she describes, and her colorful characters leap off the page. A romantic, beautiful book. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Star Tribune (Minneapolis) on Falling Angels
"Chevalier’s second novel confirms her place in the literary firmament . . . This is a beautiful novel, not soon forgotten."

Bookreporter.com
...a hugely entertaining romp through art history and medieval sexual politics...

FROM OUR EDITORS

In her fourth novel (after Virgin Blue, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Falling Angels), Tracy Chevalier returns to her most successful format, spinning a lush, rich back story behind a famous masterpiece about which little is known. While it compares favorably with her acclaimed masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring, this beautifully imagined and boldly told novel stands proudly on its own merits. Chevalier's greatest strengths as a writer come from her keen ability to re-create a time and place, in this case 15th-century France and Belgium. She interweaves narratives of the painter who conceived the six famous images, the tapissier who weaved them onto cloth, and the women in both artists' lives to create a magnificent historical novel that brings to life the enigmatic ladies of the tapestries, imagining their identities and circumstances, as well as the meaning of the tapestries about which little is actually known. This is rich territory for a writer to mine, and Chevalier shows all the impressive strengths of her previous novels. Wonderfully written, freshly conceived, and rich in the details of medieval life, The Lady and the Unicorn is another literary gem from one of our most successful and imaginative writers of historical fiction.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"A set of bewitching medieval tapestries hangs today in a protected chamber in Paris. They appear to portray a woman's 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 on finishing the tapestries - his finest, most intricate work - on time for his exacting French client. Ill-prepared for temptation and seduction, he and his family are consumed by the project and by their dealings with the full-blooded painter from Paris." The results change all their lives - lives that have been captured in the tapestries, for those who know where to look.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Tracy Chevalier's approach to fiction is so methodical that she threatens to turn writing about art into a science. Her latest novel, like her Girl With a Pearl Earring, selects a masterpiece and then weaves a story to describe its provenance.

In the case of The Lady and the Unicorn, Ms. Chevalier quite literally goes to the loom: tapestry-weaving provides her inspiration this time. The book takes its title from the famous series of medieval tapestries at the Mus￯﾿ﾽe National du Moyen ￯﾿ﾽge in Paris. Conveniently, not much is known about their origins. So Ms. Chevalier begins with the name of the family that commissioned them and with the symbolic import of the unicorn's horn. She's off and running from there. — Janet Maslin

The Washington Post

Chevalier invites readers to step into the richly imagined world of an actual work of art -- an invitation they would be foolish to decline, considering her success with Girl with a Pearl Earring. 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. — Deborah Davis

The New York Times Book Review

As she did in ''Girl With a Pearl Earring,'' her best-selling novel about a housemaid acting as a model for Johannes Vermeer, Tracy Chevalier uses this new book to imagine fictional circumstances for the creation of an actual work of art. ....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. — Wendy Smith

Publishers Weekly

Chevalier, whose bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring showed how a picture can inspire thousands of words, yokes her limpid, quietly enthralling storytelling to the six Lady and the Unicorn tapestries that hang in the Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris. As with her Vermeer novel, she takes full creative advantage of the mystery that shrouds an extraordinary collaborative work of art. Building on the little that is known or surmised-in this case that the tapestries were most likely commissioned by the French noble Jean Le Viste and made in a workshop in Brussels at the end of the 15th century-she imagines her way into a lost world. We are introduced to Nicholas des Innocents, the handsome, irrepressibly seductive artist who designed the works for the cold Le Viste, a rich, grim social climber who bought his way into the nobility and cares more about impressing the king and his court than pleasing the wife who has disappointed him by bearing three girls and no sons. Le Viste's wife, Genevi ve, tells Nicholas to create scenes with a unicorn but Nicholas's love of women-and especially of Genevi ve's beautiful daughter Claude-inspires the extraordinary faces and gestures of the women he depicts. A great romance unfolds. What makes the tale enthralling are the details Chevalier offers about the social customs of the time and, especially, the craft of weaving as it was practiced in Brussels. There are psychological anachronisms: would a young woman in medieval times express her pent-up frustrations by cutting herself as some teenage girls do today? Yet 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. And yes, readers will inevitably think about what a gorgeous movie this would make. (Jan.) Forecast: If any of Chevalier's novels has a chance to match the success of Girl with a Pearl Earring, it's this one. Expect it to rise fast on bestseller lists. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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