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Showing posts with the label The Lady and the Unicorn

Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

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This book found its way into my TBR shelves some years ago. Mainly because I loved The Girl with the Pearl Earring  so much. The last story was woven around a painting by Johannes Vermeer with the same name, and considered to be one of his master pieces. This book is about another painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Girl.  Not much is known about the painting, but it is thought to have been done around 1490. Inspired by this painting Tracy Chevalier has written a tale of a painter, a young girl from the upper classes, her mother and the weavers of tapestries in Brussels. The painter, Nicolas des Innocents,  gets a commission to make paintings which will be transfered into tapestries. He falls in love with the daughter of the noble man, and it seems, in most women that come his way. Once the paintings are ready he leaves for Brussels where the real weaving masters work. Here he gets involved with the family of the weaving master, who is taking on the challeng...