The Lady and the Unicorn Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Lady and the Unicorn Book

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, Amazon.comRead More

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  • Amazon

    Jean le Viste, a newly wealthy member of the French court, commissions the tapestries to hang in his chateau. Nicolas, his chosen designer, meets le Viste's wife Genevieve and his daughter Claude, both of whom take a keen interest in the tapestries. This novel is written by the author of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and 'Falling Angels'.

  • TheBookPeople

    The wonderful novel from the much--loved author of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and 'Falling Angels'. The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are a set of six medieval tapestries. Beautiful, intricate and expertly made, they are also mysterious in their origin and meaning. Tapestries give an appearance of order and continuity, as if designed and made by one person, belying the complicated process required to create them. Weavers, patrons, designers, artists, merchants and apprentices were involved in their making, and behind them were the wives, daughters and servants who exercised influences over their men. Like the many strands of wool and silk woven together into one cloth, so these people came together in a complex dance to create the whole picture. Jean le Viste, a newly wealthy member of the French court, commissions the tapestries to hang in his chateau. Nicolas, his chosen designer, meets le Viste's wife Genevieve and his daughter Claude, both of whom take a keen interest in the tapestries. From Paris, Nicolas moves to a weaver's workshop in Brussels in order to complete the commission. The creation of the tapestries brings together people who would not otherwise meet -- their lives become entangled, and so do their desires. As they fall in love, are shunned, take revenge, find unrequited love, turn to the church or to pagan ideals, the tapestries become to each an ideal vision of life -- yet all discover that they are unable to make this ideal world their own.

  • Foyles

    ‘Enormously enjoyable’ Evening Standard‘Charming’ The Times‘What would you have me paint instead of a battle, Madame?’Geneviève de Nanterre’s eyes gleamed.‘A unicorn.’Keen to demonstrate his new-found favour with the King, rising nobleman Jean le Viste commissions six tapestries to adorn the walls of his château. He expects soldiers and bloody battlefields. But artist Nicolas des Innocents instead designs a seductive world of women, unicorns and flowers, using as his muses Le Viste’s wife Geneviève and ripe young daughter Claude.In Belgium, as his designs spring to life under the weavers’ fingers, Nicolas is inspired once more – by the master weaver’s daughter Aliénor and her mother Christine. They too will be captured by his threads.

  • Blackwell

    From the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring comes a historical tale of love, sex and revenge. From the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring comes a historical tale of love, sex and revenge. Keen to demonstrate his new...

  • BookDepository

    The Lady and the Unicorn : Paperback : HarperCollins Publishers : 9780007172313 : : 04 Dec 2006 : 'Enormously enjoyable' Evening Standard 'Charming' The Times

  • 0007172311
  • 9780007172313
  • Tracy Chevalier
  • 4 December 2006
  • Harper
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 256
  • New edition
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