The Lady with the unicorn

the Lady with the unicorn is a series of six Tapisserie S dating from the 15th century, which one can see with the National museum of the Middle Ages (Thermal baths and hotel of Cluny, with Paris).

Description

All the tapestries take again the same elements: on a kind of island, one sees a woman surrounded by a Licorne on the right and a lion on the left, sometimes of a maidservant and other animals.

Five of these representations illustrate a direction:

taste: the lady takes a Dragée which its maidservant tightens to him;
hearing: the lady plays of the Orgue;
sight: the unicorn contemplates itself in a Miroir held by the lady;
sense of smell: while the lady manufactures a crown of flowers, a monkey breathes the perfume of a flower which it seized;
touch: the lady holds the horn of the unicorn as well as the mast of a standard.

The sixth tapestry, on which one can read the formula “has my only desire”, is more difficult to interpret. According to Arnaud, these tapestries would have been carried out starting from paperboards of the painter Jean Perréal, said Jehan of Paris. According to the catalog of a traditional exposition to Primitive French in Louvre in 2004, it would be rather the style of the Master of Anne of Brittany (Jean d' Ypres, died in 1508, or his/her Louis brother, both resulting from a line of painters) which would have inspired the paperboards of the tapestries.

History and legends

Inspired by a German legend of the 15th century, the tapestries known as of “the Lady to the unicorn” were woven in Flandres between 1484 and 1500. They had been ordered by Jean Viste, chair Cour of the Assistances of Lyon. Following successive heritages, they passed as of Viste to the Robertet, with the the Rock-Aymon, then in Rilhac, which made them transport in the current of the 18th century in their castle of Boussac.

In 1833, the castle was sold with the municipality of Boussac by their remote heiress, the countess of Ribeyreix (born Carbonnières); it became in 1838 the seat of the sub-prefecture of the district.

The tapestries had been left there, and many were those which on the occasion to admire them and to erect scaffolding the most incredible assumptions on their origin. Thus one allotted their realization to the Othoman prince, Djem (“Zizim”), unhappy rival of his brother the sultan Bajazet II, which, while waiting to be claquemuré in the tower built with its intention with Bourganeuf (see this article for more details), had remained in various castles of the area, of which that of Boussac (what established forever). To mislead its trouble, it would have made them with the assistance of its continuation. According to other sources, quite as whimsical, these tapestries would have been carried out with Aubusson: it is known that it of it is nothing.

Among the familiar ones of the sub-prefecture of Boussac George Sand, the “neighbor of Nohant appeared”. In its novel Jeanne and various articles, it evoked these tapestries. And it is it, most probably, which announced the existence of it to his/her transitory lover, Prosper Mérimée, inspector of the historic buildings, who visited the area in 1841 and made them classify under the historic buildings.

The correspondence of Mérimée brings an interesting precision in connection with the tapestries: it existed other " about it there; more beautiful, the mayor says to me, but the ex owner of the castle - it belongs today to the city - a count de Carbonière cut out them to cover carts with them and to make tapis" of them;. Remain to be seen if the cut out tapestries belonged to the continuation of the Lady to the unicorn, or if they were other tapestries…

In 1882, the municipality of Boussac sold the six tapestries for a sum of 25000 gold francs with a Parisian collector, Mr. Of Sommerard. This one installed them in its hotel from Cluny to Paris (today National museum of the Middle Ages), which it was to bequeath with all its collections at the town of Paris.

Random links: