Word: unicorns
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Lady and the Unicorn...
...Will Davenport's The Painter, about Rembrandt; and Mario Vargas Llosa's The Way to Paradise, about Gauguin. As a rule, the books are intelligent, sometimes even ingenious, but in most, the underlying formula is plain: art plus sex. So Chevalier's new best seller, The Lady and the Unicorn, features Nicolas des Innocents, painter, tapestry designer and Renaissance stud--a guy who puts the pig in pigment...
...immensely popular 2000 novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier created a fictional backstory for a famous 17th century work of art. In her new book, The Lady and the Unicorn (Dutton; 250 pages), she has created a fictional backstory for a famous 15th century work of art. It would seem the author is only too happy to be pegged as reliably formulaic. This will no doubt attract fans of the earlier novel (the movie adaptation of which is now in theaters), but it also invites inevitable comparisons, and in this regard, the new book stumbles...
Girl with a Pearl Earring, which concerns the Vermeer portrait of a delicate young woman with an intense gaze, was all sublimated passion and quiet decorum. The Lady and the Unicorn centers on the series of tapestries that today hang in Paris' Musee National du Moyen Age depicting a woman's seduction of a unicorn. Not surprisingly, the proceedings are more overtly carnal. The story begins in 1490 when the painter Nicolas des Innocents, whose appetites pointedly contradict his name, is commissioned by the wealthy Parisian Jean Le Viste to design six tapestries glorifying the nobleman's status at court...
...lack subtext, perhaps because of the large number of people involved. Chevalier does a nice job of evoking the physical conditions of the era--the muddy roads and poorly lit, dank rooms--and her descriptions of the weaving process are interesting without getting overly technical. The Lady and the Unicorn is satisfying in its familiarity, but ultimately it feels less rewarding than Pearl Earring, mostly because we've seen the technique before. --By Michele Orecklin