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travelingmonkey | all galleries >> Galleries >> Musée Cluny (Cluny Museum) / Paris, France > The Lady and the Unicorn
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01-APR-2007

The Lady and the Unicorn

Paris, France

The Lady and the Unicorn (French: La dame à la licorne) is the title of a cycle of French tapestries often considered one of the greatest works of art of the Middle Ages in Europe. They are estimated to have been woven in the late 15th century (c. 1490), in Flanders.

The tapestries are commonly interpreted as depicting the six senses - taste, hearing, sight, smell, touch, and "A mon seul désir" (meaning: "to my only desire"), often interpreted as love or understanding. Each of the six tapestries depicts a noble lady with the unicorn and some include a monkey or a lion in the scene. The pennants, as well as the armor of the Unicorn and Lion in the tapestry bear the arms of the sponsor, Jean Le Viste, a powerful nobleman in the court of King Charles VII.

The tapestries are done in the style of mille-fleurs (meaning: "thousand flowers"). The tapestries were rediscovered in 1841 by Prosper Mérimée in Boussac castle (at the time, the subprefect of the Creuse) where they had been suffering damage from their storage conditions.


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Ms. Max 27-Dec-2008 05:13
It states above that the sponsor of the tapestry, Jean Le Viste, was a nobleman in the court of King Charles VII. This must be a typo since the tapestry was created around 1490, and Charles VII's dates are Charles VII (22 February 1403 – 22 July 1461), meaning he was dead 30 years before the tapestry was created. I'm guessing that Viste was a nobleman in Charles VIII's court (he was king from 1483 to 1498) which fits better.
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