Opravy

The Lady and the Unicorn - part 2

• These tapestries are one of the most famous tapestries ever discovered.

• Often mentionned in books (La Licorne and... by Pith Schure, The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Maria Rilkes and Century by Sarah Singleton), they are also representative of the five senses and “the only desire” : their titles show which senses but we can also notice that every senses is shown in the tapestries : In the first tapestrie, “Taste”, the lady feed a bird.

• In the second tapestrie, “Hearing”, the lady and her maid play music.

• In the third tapestrie, “Sight”, the mirror shows the reflection of the unicorn which is watching it.

• In the fourth tapestrie, “Smell”, the lady is making a wreath of flowers, which certainly smell good.

• In the fifth tapestrie, “Touch”, the lady touches the unicorn's horn.

• However the last tapestrie is harder to analyze.

• The name brings to mind a tapestry about love but some think that the fact that she puts her necklace in the safe represents the “assertation of her free will”.

• It is also possible that it represents the “sixth sense” We can see on every tapestries the Le Viste family's coat of arms, on the flags: it can be inferred that it was used as a symbol of their authority, or just representative of a rich Middle-Ages family.

• This tapestries brings us in a fantastic universe, with an almost humanist work of art which leads us to a pre-Renaissance in the art.

• Studying this work is very interesting because this artist was a precursor in the art's domain.

• Anyway, we still have the art's basics of Middle-Ages, as we can see with the lack of deepness in the paintness, or the inexistent use of the perspective.

• I think those tapestries are very interessant to link with our lesson, because it shows us a part of Middle-Ages that we slightly studied (the lordship)