The Lady And The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

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.

The creation of the tapestries brings together people who would not otherwise meet – their lives become entangled, and so do their desires. From Paris, Nicolas moves to a weaver's workshop in Brussels. Nicolas, his chosen designer, meets le Viste's wife Genevieve and his daughter Claude, both of whom take a keen interest in the tapestries. Jean le Viste, a newly wealthy member of the French court, commissions the tapestries to hang in his chateau. 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.

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. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown. Tapestries give an appearance of order and continuity, as if designed and made by one person, belying the complicated process required to create them. 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 masterpieces-a set of bewitching medieval tapestries that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Beautiful, intricate and expertly made, they are also mysterious in their origin and meaning.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are a set of six medieval tapestries. The new novel from the author of the much-loved Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels.

The Lady And The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier