My one year anniversary of moving to Paris is coming up in a couple of weeks -- wow, hard to believe! -- and I was leafing through some photos I've taken in the past but never posted... sort of reliving the year in photos.
This is the "finale" in a series of tapestries hanging in the Cluny Museum, known as "The Lady and the Unicorn". The tapestries are described as being:
"among the most beautiful art treasures of the world. They were woven c.1500, probably in the workshops of Flanders, in the medieval style of mille fleurs, a "thousand flowers." Since 1882 the tapestries have been housed in Paris in the once medieval cloister, the Musée de Cluny. The tapestries represent the six senses — Hearing, Sight, Touch, Smell, Taste, and Love."
While at the Cluny on the day I took this photo, I was browsing in the museum's gift shop and noticed a small novel entitled The Lady and the Unicorn, written by Tracy Chevalier, the writer of Girl with a Pearl Earring which became a film starring Colin Firth as the great Dutch painter, Vermeer, and Scarlett Johannsen as "the Girl". No one really knows the complete history of these tapestries, and how they came into being, but Chevalier created a very nice story that interweaves known history with some creative hypothesis, especially as pertains to this finale in the tapestry series, where the banner over the Lady's head reads "Mon Seul Desir" - My Only Desire. Who is this Lady? What is her "Only Desire"? Does she desire love? Or something else? No one really knows.
I really enjoyed the book, and learned quite a bit about the "mille fleur" style of tapestry weaving, and how difficult life was for women in that era, how restrictive and limiting were the options for women. If you have a chance, stop by the Cluny (now officially called the Museum of the Middle Ages) and see the tapestries for yourself. If you can't do that, at least get a copy of the book, and enjoy.
And if you happen to be watching any of the Harry Potter movies, pay attention to what is hanging on the walls of the Gryffindor common room. You just might notice something strangely familiar, after seeing this photo.
