The Lady and the Unicorn

A tour de force of history and imagination, The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevaliers answer to the mystery behind one of the art worlds great masterpiecesa 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 unknownuntil 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 housemother and daughter, servant, and lady-in-waitingbefore 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 tapestrieshis finest, most intricate workon time for his exacting French client. The results change all their liveslives 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 tapestryan extraordinary story exquisitely told.