'THE LADY AND THE UNICORN' | A review Tapestry of art and romance falls short of Chevalier's best

Two women for the hero to woo may be one too many.
By MARTA SALIJ
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"The Lady and the Unicorn," by Tracy Chevalier (Dutton, $23.95)
One thing about Tracy Chevalier's new book: I don't see a role for Colin Firth in it.
Firth, of course, plays the painter Vermeer in the movie adaptation of Chevalier's 2000 book, "Girl With a Pearl Earring." Firth's brand of brooding leading-man romanticism is perfectly in the vein of Chevalier's brand of elegant bodice-ripping historical romances. She could have written that book for him.
But why debate the movie casting for the new book already? Because "The Lady and the Unicorn" seems calculated to get exactly the same readers and potential moviegoers as "Pearl Earring." This is not to the bad. A book that knows its audience is to be admired. And bought.
But it is not necessarily to the good, because "The Lady and the Unicorn" suffers in the comparison. It is not much worse than "Pearl Earring," but it is a little bit worse, and that is the sort of thing that readers notice.
Artwork at center
The elements in this new book are familiar. Chevalier again takes a legendary work of art whose history is not well-understood and imagines the making of it. Of course, the art-making involves a lot of lovemaking, too, usually by people who really oughtn't to be meeting in the garden that way at all.
In "The Lady and the Unicorn," the art is six tapestries hanging in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They depict the legend of the lady's seduction of the unicorn in brilliant reds, blues and gold. A little glimpse is reproduced on the book's cover, under the dust jacket, and it is magnificent, reason enough to buy the hardcover.
Art historians know the tapestries were woven around 1500 for the Le Viste family, but that's about it. So Chevalier juices the story up from there.
The lure of the job
The artist-lover in this book is Nicolas des Innocents. Cute, that name, because he's anything but innocent and he's a painter, not a tapestry designer. But the nouveau riche courtier Jean Le Viste insists he design six vast tapestries for the Le Viste banquet hall. Nicolas needs money, as usual, and he's glimpsed Le Viste's eldest daughter, a vixen named Claude. It is half for the gold and half for proximity to Claude that Nicolas takes the commission.
Nicolas is an arrogant, clattering sort of seducer, which ought to scare off a noblewoman, but Claude is of the age and temperament that a forbidden man is almost irresistible. Will Claude fall to Nicolas before she can be safely married off to a suitable man, i.e., one who can advance her family's social climb?
No, of course not. Chevalier is too realistic to succumb to that romance writer's temptation. But once Claude's mama susses out what's up and sics her most eagle-eyed lady-in-waiting on her wayward daughter, there's not much mischief left for Nicolas.
So ... off to Brussels, where the tapestries will be made. Luckily for Nicolas, there's a lovely daughter in the tapestry maker's household, too. Alienor is a waif, not a vixen, but Nicolas is smitten nonetheless. He stays for an improbably long time, and he comes back improbably often, too. Surely the roads between Paris and Brussels weren't that good.
Good second half
But let's not quibble with affection, shall we? The softening of Nicolas' caddishness in the salutary presence of Alienor is quite sweet, and the second half of the book is up to Chevalier's best. How sad that the girl has been promised in marriage to an altogether distasteful dye-maker, a boorish man who stinks of the sheep's urine used to fix his dyes. Her mother would prefer her daughter to be spared such a match, but the family is not well-off enough to spurn a suitor:
"I thought of Jacques Le Boeuf chomping his way through half our pie, and of his threat to ruin Georges' business," Alienor's mother frets. "How could Georges agree to such a man for his daughter? Even as I thought it, though, I knew there was little I could say. I knew my husband, and he had already decided."
Meanwhile, back in Paris ... oh, right, Paris. What of Claude? Nicolas remembers, eventually, when the tapestries are finished and the Le Vistes hold a banquet to unveil them. He rallies to muster some enthusiasm for his old prey, but it has the feeling of duty, not devotion.
That's the main problem with "The Lady and the Unicorn." There's one pretty young thing too many, and even an experienced cad such as Nicolas can't sustain interest in both seductions for long. I'd have stayed in Brussels, if I were he, where the young girl is a better challenge for him.
The other, smaller problem is an occasional disconcerting modernness to Chevalier's story. Well, I don't really know what life was like in 15th-century Europe, but Chevalier's young girls have a too-modern set of neuroses, down to the self-mutilation one girl practices.
But these are quibbles, and for anyone enchanted by Chevalier's historical fiction, "The Lady and the Unicorn" is satisfying enough to while several winter hours away.