Domenichino
Horses play relatively little part in early medieval art. Their curves could not be
assimilated into the angularity of Gothic. However, the later Middle Ages invented one of
the most beautiful of all animals, which in fact never existed, that exquisite white pony
with a goat's beard, a flowing tail and a long horn growing straight out of the middle of its
forehead, known as the unicorn. Everything about the unicorn is mysterious, and leads
to a string of unanswerable questions. What does it really signify? Students of allegory
and iconography give contradictory answers. What were its origins? It is said to have
originated in India, and it appears in Pliny, who says that it is a fierce and dangerous
animal, but when it sees a virgin it lays its head submissively in her lap. In consequence
the Physiologus makes the unicorn one of the supporters of the Virgin Mary. It plays a
minor role in the early Middle Ages; then, in the fifteenth century, it comes to fill some
imaginative need, and inspires two of the greatest masterpieces of late Gothic art. These
are the tapestries of the Hunt of the Unicorn in the Metropolitan Museum (thand the
slightly later tapestries in the Musce dc Cluny, known as the
Lady and the Unicorn.
Looking at these marvellous works of art we cannot help asking more questions. Where
were they made? For whom were they made? Above all, what is their subject? Nobody
knows. The catalogue of the Cloisters states with bland confidence 'The subject of the
tapestries is an allegory of the Incarnation in which the Unicorn, a symbol of purity
representing Christ, is hunted and captured.'
