Tapestries are rarely the preferred choice of museum-goers. Neither rug nor painting, often muted, remote and incomprehensible, they are an art form only a docent could love. But Tracy Chevalier's latest novel, The Lady and the Unicorn, a vibrant story about a series of medieval tapestries, will change that perception once and for all. Chevalier invites readers to step into the richly imagined world of an actual work of art -- an invitation they would be foolish to decline, considering her success with Girl with a Pearl Earring. With great insight, invention and a remarkable eye for detail, Chevalier breathes life into artists and artisans, their subjects and surroundings and, most important, their magnificent creations.

Little is known about the six elaborate wall-hangings called the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which are displayed in the Cluny Museum in Paris. The artist, though anonymous, is presumed French. The weaving, done in the late 1400s, features the detailed background pattern of flowers and plants known as "millefleur" that was perfected in Brussels at the time. The coat-of-arms displayed throughout the work suggests the identity of its patron: the Le Viste family, social climbers who would have commissioned the tapestries to advertise their wealth, taste and prominence. In addition to being decorative and utilitarian (wall-hangings made large, drafty rooms warmer and more intimate), the tapestries tell the story of a noblewoman's fanciful pursuit of a mythological unicorn. Five of the six panels depict the senses -- smell, hearing, sight, touch and taste. The remaining one, bearing the motto "My Sole Desire," shows a woman in the ambiguous act of removing -- or putting on -- her jewelry.

A scant handful of facts is the inspiration for a sumptuous behind-the-canvas tale of art, ambition and desire, as was the case with Girl with a Pearl Earring. But it is important to note that Chevalier is not simply repeating herself. A character in her new book explains the difference between a painting and a tapestry, observing that a painting is smaller and can be seen in its entirety while, with a tapestry, "You see only a part of it, and not necessarily the most important part. So no thing should stand out more than the rest, but fit together into a pattern that your eye takes pleasure in no matter where it rests." This distinction informs Chevalier's writing throughout The Lady and the Unicorn. Like a master weaver, she uses multiple narrators to tell her story, dovetailing their disparate but equally weighted points of view until the novel itself becomes a tapestry of images, ideas and emotions.

The story begins in Paris in 1490, with a randy and self-absorbed young painter, Nicolas des Innocents. Because his most successful pick-up line involves an off-color story about a unicorn's horn, he is delighted when he is commissioned to design a series of tapestries combining his two main interests: women and unicorns. His patron, nouveau riche powerbroker Jean Le Viste, is blind to the familial and psychological dramas in his own household. But Nicolas, a connoisseur of the opposite sex, instantly understands the sexual longings of Claude, the teenage daughter of the house, and the frustrations of Geneviève, her emotionally parched and embittered mother. He pursues the beautiful Claude, who is equally obsessed with him, only to be blocked by Geneviève, who moves quickly to protect her daughter's virtue.

Luckily, Nicolas has his work to distract him. He knows very little about the complex process of turning a painting into a tapestry. He receives his education at the hands of a family of Flemish weavers who embark on an ambitious two-year plan to complete the project. Georges de la Chapelle and his wife, Christine, run a workshop in Brussels, the weaving capital of the world. Assisted by their children and a few craftsmen, they transform mountains of dyed wool into magnificent weavings. Their household, like Jean Le Viste's, is a hotbed of domestic drama. Here, as in Paris, Nicolas is a catalyst for change.

There is an urgency to Chevalier's characters and their situations -- the artist desperate to make a name for himself, the girl longing to be a woman, the mother mourning her lost youth, the housewife dreaming of a profession -- that makes this medieval world surprisingly vivid and contemporary. Yet it is no accident that Chevalier ends her story in 1492 -- the dawn of the New World -- reminding us that, as the tapestries were being hung, they and the carefully structured universe they represented were about to yield to new art forms and new social orders. With The Lady and the Unicorn, however, this long-vanished world is brought back to thrilling life.

Reviewed by Deborah Davis

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Nicolas des Innocents

The messenger said I was to come at once. That’s how Jean Le Viste is—he expects everyone to do what he says immediately.

And I did. I followed the messenger, stopping just briefly to clean my brushes. Commissions from Jean Le Viste can mean food on the table for weeks. Only the King says no to Jean Le Viste, and I am certainly no king.

On the other hand, how many times have I rushed across the Seine to the rue du Four, only to come back again with no commission? It’s not that Jean Le Viste is a fickle man—on the contrary, he is as sober and hard as his beloved Louis XI once was. Humorless too. I never jest with him. It’s a relief to escape his house to the nearest tavern for a drink and a laugh and a grope to restore my spirits.

He knows what he wants. But sometimes when I come to discuss yet another coat of arms to decorate the chimney, or to paint on his wife’s carriage door, or to work into a bit of stained glass for the chapel— people say the Le Viste arms are as common as horse dung—he’ll stop suddenly, shake his head, and say with a frown, “This is not needed. I should not be thinking about such commonplace matters. Go.” And I do, feeling guilty, as if I am to blame for bringing a carriage’s decoration to his attention, when it was he who called for me.

I’d been to the rue du Four house half a dozen times before. It is not a place that impresses. Even with all the fields around it, it is built as if it were in the middle of the city, with the rooms long and narrow, the walls too dark, the stables too close—the house always smells of horses. It is the sort of house a family that has bought its way into the Court would live in—grand enough but poorly placed. Jean Le Viste probably thinks he has done well to be given such a place to live, while the Court laughs behind his back. He should be living close to the King and Notre Dame, not outside the city walls in the swampy fields around Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

When I arrived the steward took me not to Jean Le Viste’s private chamber, a map-lined room where he performs duties for Court and King alongside family matters, but to the Grande Salle, where the Le Vistes receive visitors and entertain. I had never been there. It was a long room with a large hearth at the opposite end from the door and an oak table down the center. Apart from a stone coat of arms that hung on the chimney breast and another painted over the door, it was unadorned—though the ceiling was paneled with handsome carved wood.

Not so grand, I thought as I looked around. Although shutters were open, the fire hadn’t been lit and the room was chilly with its bare walls.

“Wait here for my master,” the steward said, glaring at me. In this house people either respected artists or showed their contempt.

I turned my back on him and gazed out of a narrow window where there was a clear view of the towers of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Some say Jean Le Viste took this house so that his pious wife could step across to the church easily and often.

The door opened behind me and I turned, prepared to bow. It was only a servant girl, who smirked as she caught me half-bent. I straightened and watched as she moved across the room, banging a pail against her leg. She knelt and began to clear the fireplace of ashes.

Was she the one? I tried to remember—it had been dark that night behind the stables. She was fatter than I recalled, and sullen with her heavy brow, but her face was sweet enough. It was worth a word.

“Stay a moment,” I said when she had pulled herself up clumsily and made her way to the door. “Sit and rest your feet. I’ll tell you a story.”

The girl stopped with a jolt. “You mean the story of the unicorn?”

She was the one. I opened my mouth to answer, but the girl jumped in before me. “Does the story go on to say that the woman grows big with child and may lose her place? Is that what happens?”

So that was why she was fat. I turned back to the window. “You should have taken more care.”

“I shouldn’t have listened to you, is what I should have done. I should have shoved your tongue right up your arse.”

“Out you go now, there’s a good girl. Here.” I dug into my pocket, pulled out a few coins, and threw them onto the table. “To help with the baby.”

The girl stepped across the room and spat in my face. By the time I’d wiped the spittle from my eyes she was gone. So were the coins.

Jean Le Viste came in soon after, followed by Léon Le Vieux. Most patrons use a merchant like Léon to act as middleman, haggling over terms, drawing up the contract, providing initial money and materials, making sure the work gets done. I’d already had dealings with the old merchant over coats of arms painted for a chimney breast, an Annunciation for the chamber of Jean Le Viste’s wife, and some stained glass for the chapel in their château near Lyons.

Léon is much favored by the Le Vistes. I have respect for him but I cannot like him. He is from a family that were once Jews. He makes no secret of it, but has used it to his advantage, for Jean Le Viste is also from a family much changed over time. That is why he prefers Léon—they are both outsiders who have made their way in. Of course Léon is careful to attend mass two or three times a week at Notre Dame, where many will see him, just as Jean Le Viste takes care to act the true noble, commissioning works for his house, entertaining lavishly, bowing and scraping to his King.

Léon was looking at me, smiling through his beard as if he had spotted a monkey on my back. I turned to Jean Le Viste. “Bonjour, Monseigneur. You wished to see me.” I bowed so low my head throbbed. It never hurt to bow low.

Jean Le Viste’s jaw is like a hatchet, his eyes like knife blades. They flicked around the room now, then rested on the window over my shoulder. “I want to discuss a commission with you, Nicolas des Innocents,” he said, pulling at the sleeves of his robe, which was trimmed with rabbit fur and dyed the deep red lawyers wear. “For this room.”

I glanced around the room, keeping my face clear of thoughts. It was best to be so with Jean Le Viste. “What did you have in mind, Monseigneur?”

“Tapestries.”

I noted the plural. “Perhaps a set of your coat of arms to hang either side of the door?”

Jean Le Viste grimaced. I wished I hadn’t spoken.

“I want tapestries to cover all of the walls.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

I looked around the room once again, more carefully this time. The Grande Salle was at least ten paces long and five wide. Its walls were very thick, the local stone rough and gray. Three windows were cut into one of the long walls, and the hearth took up half of one of the end walls. Tapestries to line the room could take a weaver several years.

“What would you have as the subject, Monseigneur?” I had designed one tapestry for Jean Le Viste—a coat of arms, of course. It had been simple enough, scaling up the coat of arms to tapestry size and designing a bit of background greenery around it.

Jean Le Viste folded his arms over his chest. “Last year I was made president of the Cour des Aides.”

The position meant nothing to me but I knew what I should say. “Yes, Monseigneur. That is a great honor to you and your family.”

Léon rolled his eyes to the carved ceiling, while Jean Le Viste waved his hand as if he were ridding the room of smoke. Everything I said seemed to annoy him.

“I want to celebrate the achievement with a set of tapestries. I’ve been saving this room for a special occasion.”

This time I waited.

“Of course it is essential that the family coat of arms be displayed.”

“Of course, Monseigneur.”

Then Jean Le Viste surprised me. “But not on its own. There are already many examples of the coat of arms alone, here as well as in the rest of the house.” He gestured at the arms over the door and hearth, and to some carved in the ceiling beams that I hadn’t noticed before. “No, I want it to be part of a larger scene, to reflect my place at the heart of the Court.”

“A procession, perhaps?”

“A battle.”

“A battle?”

“Yes. The Battle of Nancy.”

I kept my face thoughtful. I even smiled a little. But in truth I knew little of battles, and nothing of this one at Nancy, of who had been there, who had been killed, and who had won. I’d seen paintings of battles but never done one myself. Horses, I thought. I would need to paint at least twenty horses to cover these walls, tangled with men’s arms and legs and armor. I wondered then what had made Jean Le Viste—or Léon, more likely—choose me for this work. My reputation at the Court is as a miniaturist, painter of tiny portraits of ladies that they give men to carry. Praised for their delicacy, the miniatures are much in demand. I paint shields and ladies’ carriage doors for drink money, but my true skill is in making a face the size of my thumb, using a few boar bristles and color mixed with egg white. It needs a steady hand, and that I have, even after a long night of drinking at Le Coq d’Or. But the thought of painting twenty huge horses—I began to sweat, though the room was chilly.

“You are sure that you want the Battle of Nancy, Monseigneur,” I said. It was not quite a question.

Je...