The Lady and the Unicorn

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. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 8, 2003
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, Geneviève, 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. (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.