olorful tapestries, woven by skilled craftsmen, brought warmth and glowing life to the bare stone walls of Europe's medieval and Renaissance castles and palaces. The tapestries pictured events of history and legend, allegories, and scenes of palace and country life. Religious tapestries decorated Gothic cathedrals, picturing Biblical scenes or episodes from the lives of the saints. Tapestries were hung from balconies on parade days and decorated the tents of warriors at tournaments and on battlefields. These tapestries are not only beautiful to look at, but often provide historians with some of the best records of the dress and customs of the particular period in which they were woven.

n early versions of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word re'em, now translated as "wild ox," was translated "monoceros," meaning "one horn." This became "unicorn" in English. By the Middle Ages this white animal had become a symbol of love and purity, which could only be subdued by a gentle maiden. Images of ladies and unicorns was a theme in the finest of tapestries. Below are several examples of tapestries depicting this relationship between maidens and unicorns.

A late 15th Century Swiss tapestry. The unicorn is shielding the maiden from lustful love. "He who hunts for sensual pleasure will find grief." she admonishes the huntsman. He protests, "I hunt for faithfulness."

The poem below was sent to me by a visitor to Mystical Unicorn. She has given me permission to publish it for your enjoyment. Thought it was very appropriate it be included on this page as well as in the Unicorn Poetry section.

To A Unicorn

The unicorn gallops through forests,
   softly eluding the dawn,
      faster and faster the fleetest of feet
         passes the speed of the song.

Enters into light years of quickness,
   disappearing as magical ones do,
      woven into the fabric of the universe,
         the unicorn takes wing and is gone.

Now captured by tapestry's taper,
   man's nimble fingers weave on,
      the unicorn caged only in carpet,
         threaded with gold and a song.

But if one looks closely in darkness,
   to the still point before shadows end,
      then perhaps we'll catch a glimpse
         of the unicorn,

            galloping,

               galloping on.

By:  S.K. Lindeman
 

t appears the unicorn has been around for as long as 5,000 years. That's the approximate date of the oldest surviving works of art depicting this imaginary creature, which scholars believe may have its origins in fanciful descriptions of the rhinoceros. But artists, adventurers and other dreamers needed a creature more charming and graceful than the rhino—too swift to be captured, too fierce to be tamed, too beautiful to be forgotten, too mysterious to be understood.

eauty and mystery also surround the most famous works of art to picture these animals, the seven Unicorn Tapestries. Woven about 1500, probably in Brussels, the tapestries are mostly wool with some silk and metallic threads. All of their myriad colors were derived from only three dye plants:  madder (reds), weld (yellows), and woad (blues). All seven have sustained some damage and only fragments of the fifth have survived. Two of the tapestries, the first and seventh, incorporate wonderful examples of the stylized millefleurs (thousand flowers) design as backgrounds. The others depict realistic woodland and garden settings. The tapestries have been housed at The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, since it opened in 1938. They are exhibited in a specially built room with a volcanic stone doorway topped by carved unicorns, a limestone fireplace, stained-glass Gothic windows and period furnishings intended to suggest a nobleman's chambers, including a beaker from the 1600s believed at the time to be the horn of a unicorn (since determined to have been made from the elongated and spiraled tusk of a narwhal).

he tapestries have provided both pleasure and puzzle for years: Nobody knows who created them or why, nor exactly what they mean. The iconography of the tapestries suggests that they were created to celebrate a marriage. An inventory dated 1680 (almost two centuries after they were made) records that the tapestries belonged to François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (author of the Maximes). They were taken from the family's château at Verteuil in 1793, during the French Revolution. They were rediscovered in the 1850s on a farm where they had been used for 50 years—to cover potato crops!  In 1922 they were purchased from the de La Rochefoucauld family by John D. Rockefeller. They hung in his Manhattan townhouse until he donated them to the museum in 1937.

or anyone accustomed to seeing images of the Unicorn Tapestries on note cards or in art books, reality can be a shock. First off, they are huge—so huge that even standing six feet back, you have to tilt your head all the way back to see the top. (They differ in size, but 12 feet by 12 feet is the average.) Second, the weaving is so spectacular you may think you are looking at a painting. The designs are brightly colored and so extraordinarily detailed that more than 100 species of plants appear, 85 of which have been identified. One of the gardens at The Cloisters has been planted, with as many of the plants as can be found, in a design as close as possible to the "Unicorn in the Garden" tapestry.

our of the seven segments tell the story of a hunt for the elusive unicorn, but the subjects are richly allegorical. The Christian interpretation was that the capture, death, and restoration of the unicorn (as the symbol of purity representing Christ) represented the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. At the same time, many of the tapestries' motifs contain well defined meanings related to courtly love, marriage, and fertility. The pomegranate, for example, prominent in the seventh tapestry, represented the church, Jesus, the promise of immortality, and human fertility. Other scholars believe the tapestries mingle various symbolisms, such as Passion, Resurrection (The Unicorn in Captivity) and even as a metaphor for love. While the tapestries were at one time believed to be part of the same series, this has been much debated in recent years.

n "The Unicorn in Captivity", the red stains on his flank are, according to a label on the wall in the museum, juice from ripe pomegranates. But couldn't they be blood from his wounds? Is he really a happy pet in the colorful garden, or is he trapped and misunderstood, gathering his strength to take the leap over his pen, to escape his captors?

Tapestry 1:  The Start of the Hunt

Tapestry 2:  The Unicorn at the Fountain

Tapestry 3:  The Unicorn Tries to Escape

Tapestry 4:  The Unicorn Defends Himself

Tapestry 5:  The Unicorn is Captured by the Maiden

Tapestry 6:  The Unicorn is Wounded & Brought to the Castle

Tapestry 7:  The Unicorn in Captivity

All images of the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries taken from:

Cloisters Museum; Unicorn Tapestries A Picture Book