justagirl-with-thoughts

[justagirl-with-thoughts]

unicorns are kind of horrifying

The Unicorn Tapestries, also known as the Hunt of the Unicorn, created around 1495-1505, and is made out of wool warp, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts, the tapestries are currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

If you didn't know, unicorns were kind of messed up at first.

In the Medieval Ages there was an incredible amount of lore surrounding the unicorn. There are different possibilities as to how the idea of this creature came to be about, but in whatever case, the legend was obviously lasting.

I'd like to detail some of the research I had been doing on the Medieval lore of this creature.*

The image above comes from a specific set of tapestries that detail a hunt of a unicorn. Every detail of these tapestries is honestly beautiful and often symbolic.

To summarize the key point of the legend, the unicorn was a very temperamental creature, and know one could go near it. In some tapestry scene the unicorn is shown to impale its attackers on its horn, so it was not exactly a defenseless creature.

Here is where the legend gets...annoying. The only person who could tame this creature was a young virgin girl. Obviously this is gross, and some Medieval writers and artists took this idea in really gross directions**, but I would like to attempt to understand the reasoning behind this aspect of the lore.

For one, the Middle Ages in Western Europe was where a lot of the traditional Catholic beliefs and traditions were really fostered, so naturally it affected the art made. In many cases, it is believed the unicorn was a symbol of Christ so this piece could have been an allegory for the life and death of Christ.

Then, the Virgin Mary was a highly worshiped holy figure, so the symbol of "the virgin" was respected. Having this idea of a virgin in the story likely had some secular motivations that meant to encourage this idea of purity in women, but it is also likely that the inclusion of the virgin figure was meant to amplify the importance of this creature.

Remember, people believed unicorn were real, and anything people could make into a religious symbol, they did. If an artist was trying to express that the unicorn was a holy symbol for Christ, they had to include other visual clues like "the virgin".

For me, this is one of those things that I found really interesting, and wanted to think further about. I am curious as to how you could interpret the ideals of this legend and artwork. The history of this creature is vast and strange, it is fascinating to see how it involved with pop culture today knowing the disturbing origins.

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*In this case I am referring to the Middle Ages rather generally, but I am more specifically focusing on the Western European lore. There are similar legends that come from East Asia, however, as well.

**I really do not want to detail some of the more disturbing/graphic aspects of this legend, but the article The Unicorn: Creature of Love by Teresa Noelle Roberts addresses some of history and more gory details rather tamely if you really wanna look into it.

#art history #folklore #unicorn #medieval #medieval ages #medieval art #art theory #ramblings #academia #history #middle ages #western Europe