I tour de-force of history and imagination. The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalier's answer to the mystery behind one of the art world's great masterpieces. A set of bewitching medieval tapestries hangs today in a protected chamber in Paris. They appear to portray a woman's seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown—until now. Paris, 1490. A shrewd French nobleman commissions six lavish tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. He hires the charismatic, arro-gant, sublimely talented Nicolas des Innocents to design them. Nicolas creates havoc among the women in the house—mother and daughter, servant and lady-in-waiting-before 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 on finishing the tapestries— his finest, most intricate work—on time for his exacting French client. Ill-prepared for temptation and seduction, he and his family are consumed by the project and by their dealings with the full-blooded painter from Paris. The results change all their lives-lives 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 tapestry-an extraordinary story exquisitely told.

ISBN: 9780525947677