The Lady and The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
August 25th 2006 03:53
Tracy Chevalier’s The Lady and The Unicorn treads the same path as her Girl with a Pearl Earring. Both use an object of art as a canvas and breathe scandal into it. This time, instead of a Vermeer’s painting, she takes up fifteenth-century set of tapestries and they allow her to inject more sex and heartbreak into the story than the Vermeers.
Jean le Viste, a fifteenth century aristocrat takes upon himself to commission a huge set of tapestries to cover his Grand Salle to celebrate his presidency of the Cours des Aides. Nicholas des Innocents, a Parisian artist is to do the job. Nicolas is a rake and it does not take long for him to lust after Claude, le Viste’s beautiful young daughter who is carefully watched over by her cold and fanatical mother, Genevieve. A situation ripe for explosion in fifteenth-century Europe where class differences were rigid and an artisan could never hope for a nobleman’s daughter. It is Genevieve who comes up with the idea of lady and the unicorn for the tapestries; a lady offering food and other inducements to a stubborn unicorn which finally gives in and lays its head in her lap; each tapestry representing one sense and the final one where the lady tames the unicorn, representing man’s spirit conquering the senses.
Nicholas does not realise how revolutionary a design he has made until he goes to Brussels where the tapestries are actually to be weaved. Georges de la Chapelle, an industrious weaver accepts the commission against his better judgement. His wife Christine will never be allowed to weave herself due to guild rules even though it is her fondest dream. Their daughter Alienor is a blind but precocious daughter has a grim fate in store for her. All these women find their way into the tapestries and Nicolas touches them all in one way or the other.
Chevalier uses multiple narrators in her novel which races to its tragic conclusion. Many people who have read her previous novel were disappointed with this one. I wasn’t. Where Girl with a Pearl Earring is controlled, The Lady and The Unicorn is lavish. But it is not less an interesting read. Having read other novelists like Susan Vreeland and Sarah Dunant who have come up with similar novels, I can say that Tracy Chevalier beats them all. Go for it.
Image Source: tchevalier.com
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