Homage to the Unicorn at the Museum of the Middle Ages, Paris

The Cluny Museum in Paris, also known as the MUSÉE NATIONAL DU MOYEN ÂGE – the Museum of the Middle Ages, currently has an exhibition, from 14 July 2018 to 25 February 2019, called Magical Unicorns. Around the year 1500, the unicorn image was the object of desire and fantasy, seen in art, porcelain, sculptures and tapestries.

The main feature of the exhibition is The Lady and the Unicorn wool and silk tapestries, dated around 1500. The tapestries arrived at the Cluny Museum in Paris in 1882, after being located in 1814 in the Boussac Castle in the French department of Cruese.

Author Tracy Chevalier wrote about the tapestries in her 2005 book called The Lady and the Unicorn. The six tapestries date back to Jean Le Viste, a nobleman of King Charles VII – the time of the crossroads between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Jean Le Viste commissioned artist Nicolas des Innocents to design the concept pictures for the large tapestries to be hung in Le Viste’s Grande Salle (Great Hall) in his residence at the rue du Four in the suburb of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris.

Little was known of these famous tapestries that now hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Master weaver – the lissier Georges de la Chapelle – with his son, Georges Le Jeune, his family and hired weavers, worked tirelessly on the task.The unveiling of the tapestries occurred during party celebrations for The Feast of St. Valentine.

In each of the six tapestries, the unicorn is drawn closer and closer to a lady until it rests in her lap. The six tapestries are called: Sound (the unicorn is facing away from the lady), Taste (the unicorn is near the lady but not looking at her), Smell (the unicorn is next to the lady and looking at her), Sight (the unicorn rests its front legs on the lady's lap), Touch (the lady touches the unicorn's horn), and A Mon Seul Desir (My Sole Desire). The order of the series has never been conclusively determined though.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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