Once, when they left the museum at the beginning of a snowstorm, Hank left the first tracks, all very close together as he tried not to slip and fall. My palms were damp before every tour I gave, worried my boss was hovering near the doorway, ready to reprimand me for my pronunciation of Rochefoucauld. The Lady and the Unicorn (French: La Dame à la licorne) is the modern title given to a series of six tapestries created in the style of mille-fleurs (meaning: "thousand flowers") and woven in Flanders from wool and silk, from designs ("cartoons") drawn in Paris around 1500. The task was to digest the scholarly material written about the collection, then condense and transform it into a one-hour “highlights of the collection” tour. It was a concept that shaped the rest of his life. The sheer size of the Unicorn Tapestries required me to use my entire five-foot-three body to draw a narrative line through them. In the fifth tapestry we see the lady making a wreath of fresh flowers. Nobody knows who made the Unicorn Tapestries, a set of seven weavings that depict a unicorn hunt that has been described as “the greatest inheritance of the Middle Ages.”. Woven in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium, from wool and silk, the “Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries” consist of six tapestries designed from drawings that originated from Paris. Hank told me that Howie had moved to the Midwest to live with family. The other guards didn’t even have the chance to throw him a customary goodbye party, with bottles of soda, cupcakes, and a tray of macaroni and cheese. My first job at the Cloisters was behind the oak desk in the octagonal main hall, where I processed admissions tickets, untangled the audio guides, and listened to the chants of Hildegard von Bingen’s “11,000 Virgins,” which played on repeat from the gift shop for at least ten years. “It blew my mind,” Howie explained. I watched as one of the weavers stood only a few inches from the scene of the unicorn in front of the fountain, staring at just one small section on the far right side. “I have no doubt that people will be spinning stories and interpretation for generations to come.”. Howie smiled and opened his binder. Guards could direct visitors to the gardens or the bathroom, but were forbidden to speak about the art itself. “I forgot what you look like,” Howie said to me on the phone. Each tapestry featured a noble lady and a unicorn and hence the name. “It will be career suicide for you if your bosses know that you’re talking to me”. Medieval tapestry wall-hangings. The first is the most popular interpretation, and refers to the old belief that the unicorn is so wild it cannot be tamed, except by a virgin. —James Rorimer, 1942. Their luminosity, mysterious subject matter, and depiction of the unicorn have made them timeless objects of intense debate. Whenever he had a new idea about the tapestries, he stole an extra two minutes while passing through on his inspection tours to look closer. Created around 1500, The lady and the unicorn tapestries have been the subject of literary inspiration, scholarly speculation and wonder ever since. If you doubt this, visit the wonderful Cluny Museum in Paris, the Musée National de Moyen Âge (see a link to a video here). Howie squinted his eyes to see the time in the corner of my computer screen, then stood up to leave and go change into his uniform. Scholars hypothesized that it was made to hang behind the bed of a noble couple on their wedding night. The fourth scene was placed above the door that led to a gallery of much older tapestries. One legend says that they were made for the wedding of Prince Zizim who had the tapestry woven for his lady love while he was in prison. Security guards were stationed in different galleries throughout the day on assigned rotations. The Lady and the Unicorn (French: La Dame a la licorne) also called the Tapestry Cycle is one of the most well known tapestry series. There are six tapestries, created circa 1480-1500, “Counting knots,” she replied, smiling and opening her eyes wide. In 1992, Howard Comeau circled an advertisement in the New York Times for security guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tapestries > Medieval Tapestries > Lady with the Unicorn. Hank and Howie walked home together at the end of their shifts. Howie was always looking for connections. The fifth tapestry had two scenes in one weaving. And he swore that he would never rest until Jean’s name got out there. If no one was available, the visitor was reminded that they could purchase the audio guide. He looked directly into his eyes. “Remember that squirrel he said was a symbol related to Anne of Brittany?” Howie’s eyes flickered. He smiled and held his palms apart as though he was welcoming me into his church for the first time. He became obsessed with studying the tapestries. She thought many of Howie’s ideas were as legitimate as the formal scholarship, but understood why scholars felt proprietary about their credentials. They present the senses in a mille fleurs tapestry background, plus the enigmatic A Mon Seul Desir tapestry. Constructed during the Great Depression, the museum is a feudal fantasy composed of fragments from five medieval French cloisters built around a steel-framed tower. The next edition of the museum guidebook scrubbed Rorimer’s interpretation. He was happy to be assigned to the Cloisters, which was so close to his apartment that he could walk to work. I spent my free time in the museum’s library, reading through several dozen books and articles assigned to prospective lecturers. He sighed, tucked a piece of paper into his book, and walked halfway from the oak desk to where he could see Howie dancing in the bit of light that stretched toward the apse from the adjacent gallery. “So I put ‘Jusepe de Ribera’ into Google and there you were!”. “What does the number twelve remind you of … yes, twelve apostles, because the hunt for the unicorn is also an allegory of Christ’s Passion.”. It’s a secular sanctuary of flowers and stained glass, a peaceful oasis for stressed-out New Yorkers, though few people in the neighborhood go. I first met Howie late one afternoon, when I was still working at the admissions desk. In late 1922, the Unicorn Tapestries disappeared again. Join the writers and staff of The Paris Review at our next event. Whenever Howie found something new, he’d use his flashlight to illuminate that corner of the unicorn’s forest for Hank before they returned to their assigned posts. The architecture imposed a monastic culture upon the staff. The Lady and the Unicorn are six tapestries depicting a Medieval lady in various poses. He pulled index cards from his pockets, prompts for the ideas he kept stored in his mind, but encouraged me to write it all down. He discovered the self-portrait of Jean Fouquet that he had seen in many books but hadn’t realized was kept at the Louvre. The stairs down to Dyckman Street were the quickest route, but they chose the much longer horseshoe path because it gave them more time to talk. Hanging on either side of the gallery’s windows are two additional tapestries, which look wildly different from the rest,but share the same cipher of an a and a backward e tied together with a cord. Howie’s mastery of Latin and his rigorous Catholic education made learning the Met’s collection easy. If a visitor ensorcelled by the Unicorn Tapestries approached a guard to ask why the hunters wanted to kill the unicorn, the protocol was to send them to the main hall, where they had purchased their ticket. If the tapestries were displayed at a betrothal ceremony, they would be read far differently than if they were shown on Easter. The gift shop manager shut off the stereo, and the “11,000 Virgins” halted. Historians attribute the tapestries to be commissioned by the Le Viste family due to the coat of arms prominently placed on the … Twenty years later, I would find myself working at the Cloisters, explaining the tapestries to surly high school students, Brazilian tourists, Franciscan monks from the Bronx, and anyone else who attended the afternoon tour. He leafed through the laminated pages, then turned the binder around. Because my little office was in the basement, next to the public bathrooms, where only the cleaning staff treads, no one ever knew. His time in Italy, where strangers had invited him into their homes to share meals, opened him up to how easy and beautiful life could be. Before supervisors watched everyone’s activity on cameras, night guards carried small radios or reading lamps. They were most likely designed by the “Master of Anne of Brittany” (so called because he designed a book of hours for the French queen, Anne of Brittany), a preeminent artist of the day. When the French king made his ceremonial entry into Reims, along the carriage route were tableaux vivants, allegorical and historical “living pictures” performed by actors and designed and choreographed by court artists. If she sits in the woods, the unicorn will come and lay its head in her lap. Every plant, flower, and figure was drawn in black pen, delineating all their shapes. It was near the end of the day and he needed to use the bathroom, but decided to have one last look at the late medieval galleries. The cartoons (original designs) for the tapestries were made in Paris and then they were woven in Flanders from wool and silk, probably in about 1511. They had been used to wrap barren fruit trees during the winter. The tapestries did belong to the La Rochefoucauld in 1793, before they were stolen by rioters who set fire to their château at Verteuil. Howie, more than twenty years his senior, ran straight out, yelling wahooo, then turned to his side and surfed down the powder paths. Tapestries would be on display during grand events and public spectacles, mixed and matched to communicate whatever propaganda needed to be told. On his days off, Howie visited the Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library to learn more about the era associated with the tapestries, and one day when he requested three books about Charles VIII, he found a piece of information that electrified him. The visitors winced as they observed the hunter’s spear jammed into the unicorn’s side, his tongue falling out the side of his mouth and his eyes rolling backward. When he overheard two women giggling in front of the Unicorn Tapestries, he walked up behind them and said, “Please don’t ridicule the art,” with an exaggerated British accent. She understood an entirely different language of the tapestries, one spoken only by a small group of artists. He walked back to the portrait, then looked right and left to make sure no security guards were watching him. His eyes flickered with anticipation, but he snatched the postcard away before I reacted. He was supposed to stand in the doorway, but he couldn’t resist moving deeper into the dark gallery to hear the lecturers give their tours. It consists of six tapestries: each stages a high society young lady with a maid companion, in an idyllic garden. “We were like monks—unmarried men, going around in circles in the dark,” said Hank, dissolving into laughter. A 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 that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. “You know I have a mark on my head,” he said when I asked to hear his theories, tapping his mop of straight hair, then pointing upstairs to the tower. He had already placed a CD inside, Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Generations of Washington Heights residents have believed it’s an abandoned church. Luxuriously woven in fine wool and silk with silver and gilded threads, the tapestries vividly depict scenes associated with a hunt for the elusive, magical unicorn. He winked, then danced off into the galleries. 1500, probably in the workshops of Flanders, in the medieval style of mille fleurs; since 1882 the tapestries have been housed in Paris in the once medieval cloister, the Musée de Cluny; represent the six senses--Hearing, Sight, Touch, Smell, Taste, and Love) “We have a canonical version of how these things went,” Hank said, “but we can’t really ever know.”. These famous tapestries date from around 1500 and are located in the Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris. A unicorn and a lion surround them while presenting the coat of arms of the sponsor, a … Since then, the Met’s most eminent scholars have debated the finer points of the tapestries, each time removing more and more from the guidebooks and wall labels. He would always call Hank at his post, urging him to come upstairs to see a beautiful sunset or a blood moon. “The Unicorn Tapestries are a repository of symbols made for the education of the young members of the French royal court,” he declared after settling himself into a chair I had pulled up next to my desk. A rumor spread that he had cancer. Among other things, the tapestries represent the five senses. To see the third scene, I took visitors on a slow walk across the gallery, a strategic pause before the violence started. I was waiting for the last visitor in the galleries to return the audio guide they had rented. She stood there for over ten minutes. Among other things, the tapestries represent the five senses. Their explanations to an enraptured audience were just an academic exercise of enforcing the museum’s sanctioned scholarship. He tried to push away the rest of questions about his health and location and began swimming in the perfect picture of the tapestries he held in his mind. A rich American had bought them and transferred them to his bank vault before anyone else could see them. Unfortunately, the tapestries had not endured the passage of time well, and showed evidence of having been gnawed at by rats, and were going mouldy. I recognized the postcard image as a painting of Jusepe de Ribera’s The Holy Family, with a Virgin Mary who has pale skin and dark hair tied back, a lot like mine. On the first day of summer in 1997, Howie transferred to the evening shift. Howie shared a greater intimacy with the Unicorn Tapestries than perhaps anyone in their history. Rorimer was drafted into World War II, and served with the Monuments Men to recover works of art stolen by the Nazis. There are records of shipments of tapestries from stockpiles kept at major castles that track with the locations of the dukes and barons who owned them. Howie dropped to his knees, like a priest bowing down before the Holy Sacrament. “He’s smiling so much you can see his gums,” I said, eliciting their own smiles, then pushed their gazes toward the regal hand of the woman stroking the unicorn’s mane. “Several artists worked on the tapestries, and they borrowed designs done for other works and recycled them.”. Sign up for the Paris Review newsletter and keep up with news, parties, readings, and more. I pointed to the next scene, making everyone quickly turn their heads to see the hunters grab their weapons and chase the unicorn across a stream. Choose from thousands of designs or create your own today! On his breaks, he’d stop by her little office near the library vaults. Howie, as most people called him, never took a course on medieval art, but fell in love with Giotto and Filippo Lippi while hitchhiking around Italy in the late sixties. “Let’s pick up where we left off,” he suggested. The Lady and the Unicorn. The seven individual hangings known as "The Unicorn Tapestries," are among the most beautiful and complex works of art from the late Middle Ages that survive. Howie enjoyed being posted near the Unicorn Tapestries. He told me about a trip to Paris twenty years ago, and a visit to the Louvre. Five-hundred-year-old gold threads, too tarnished to be seen during the day, sparkled under Howie’s flashlight. The director’s office was at the top of the tower and peeked out from Fort Tryon Park’s dense foliage. On 9/11, he told Hank he saw Mars in the sky—of course, the god of war. The tapestries were transferred to Rockefeller’s private residence in Midtown Manhattan. Semtomn Tapestry Wall Hanging French The Lady and Unicorn to My Only 16Th Polyester Fabric Home Decor Tapestries for Living Room Bedroom Dorm 60x80 Inches 4.1 out of 5 stars 25 $18.90 $ 18 . LADY AND THE UNICORN Lady and the Unicorn Tapestry Series in the Museum of the Middle Ages, France. The next most important curator had the entire floor below, then the third-ranking curator, followed by the library and the educational and administrative offices in descending order. The Lady and the Unicorn is a series of six massive wall-length tapestries that feature a medieval lady in a garden, sometimes accompanied by her handmaid, but always hanging out with a unicorn. Hank carefully lowered himself to the ground, flopped over, and gave in to the mystical experience that Howie had engineered. Representing touch, in the fourth tapestry the lady holds the unicorn’s horn as the lion looks on. Visit our store to buy archival issues of the magazine, prints, T-shirts, and accessories. Discovered in 1841 by Prosper Mérimée in the Boussac Castle, the Lady and the Unicorn wall-hanging still inspires admiration today. The lion and the unicorn once again feature, lying on their back. He identified these as symbols in a system that pointed to Anne of Brittany as their owner and decided the tapestries had been made to celebrate her marriage to Louis XII in 1499. Court artists in fifteenth-century France were multimedia artists. The tapestries can be interpreted several ways – as a virgin seducing a unicorn, as a woman renouncing the physical world of the senses for the spiritual world, aas the Virgin Mary with Christ. The six tapestries named The Lady and the Unicorn were commissioned by Jean le Viste, in 1464, and are not to be confused with the seven tapestries comprising The Hunt of the Unicorn, 1) commissioned by Anne of Brittany (25 January 1477 – 9 January 1514), 2), bought by John D. Rockefeller, Jr (29 January 1874 – 11 May 1960), in 1922, and 3) donated to the … I pointed to the rose forming from the dog’s bloody wound, a detail I had never even noticed until an eighth-grade boy asked me about it. Uniformed security guards paced across the museum, hands stuffed in their polyester pockets or clasped behind their backs. On July 26, 1942, the New York Times reported that Rorimer had identified symbols that proved the key to the mystery, among them a knotted cord, a pair of striped tights, and a squirrel. Be warned, he said, Howie has lots of theories about the Unicorn Tapestries that he’s always going on about. By twilight, the Unicorn Tapestries gallery was completely dark. They were sent to New York for an exhibition, which never opened. A 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 that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Servers from the diner on Dyckman Street asked for Howie in the main hall. A private concert for two, lying on their backs, as a soprano’s voice soared through a twelfth-century apse. Howie had a boom box that he stored in his overflowing locker. I became fixated on the Unicorn Tapestries, the artwork that made visitors gasp when they suddenly recognized it in the dark gallery. In two small fragments it was possible to see how the unicorn had been trapped in an enclosed garden by a maiden. They fell into a discussion about the tapestries. Yellow light burned inside the lamps that lined the park paths, making it feel like they were walking through the foliage of the tapestries. 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