Allegory and the Unicorn Tapestries

The unicorn tapestries are among the world's best-known works of handwoven patterned fabric. Usually on display at the Cloisters, the branch of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to medieval art, they are rich in detail and allegory. Composed of seven fabric panels, they were created both for warmth and to inspire storytelling. They are among the finest examples of the ancient art of tapestry--and perhaps the most enigmatic.

Thought to have been designed in France and woven in Brussels between 1495 and 1505, the unicorn tapestries were created primarily from wool, using silk and metallic thread. They present scenes of a hunt for the unicorn, a mythological creature usually depicted as a large white horse with a long horn growing out of the center of its head. All seven panels have sustained some damage, and only fragments of the fifth remain. Yet they have such realistic detail that observers have identified most of the plant life shown. Some of the flora is shown in the landscape and garden settings, while other examples are evident in the millefleurs background. To the medieval viewer the plants appearing in the tapestries would have represented not only cures for human ills but also symbols of deeper truths.

Speculation concerning the commissioning and narrative meaning of the tapestries falls into two main camps. One theory holds that the initials A and a reversed E joined by a bow, an emblem of Anne of Brittany (twice the queen of France), indicates their connection with Anne and her husband Louis XII. The same theory suggests that in the sixth tapestry the lovers are Anne and Louis. Another hypothesis links the A and E to Antoinette of Ambroise, the wife of Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld. The initials F and R have been sewn into the sky of the third tapestry, and an inventory of records for 1680 showed the tapestries as belonging to La Rochefoucauld. In 1793, during the French Revolution, the tapestries were taken from the family's chateau in Verteuil (peasants apparently used them to protect produce), but they were recovered in the 1850s. The tapestries were purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1922 and were donated to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1937.

Another focus of discussion concerning the tapestries is the nature and meaning of the allegorical tale they tell. Do they represent a tale of courtly love, or do they depict the life of Christ? This question has been asked of another allegory, the Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, in the Bible. The surface story of the Song chronicles the sometimes stormy relationship between man and woman, and some scholars say its meaning is just that. Others say that the Song concerns the relationship of Christ to the church. The debate over the tapestries runs a similar course. Although the surface theme of the unicorn tapestries is the struggle between the mythical unicorn and those pursuing it, the symbolism could suggest that the tapestries were created either to celebrate courtship, matrimony, and fertility or to depict the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ.

The Start of the Hunt introduces the hunters but not the unicorn. Hunting with trained dogs in the late Middle Ages was an activity of the nobility, and hunters in the tapestries are dressed in fine clothing, a clue to their rank.

In the second tapestry, The Unicorn Is Found, the unicorn uses his magical horn to remove a snake's venom from the water. It is here that the theory regarding Christian symbolism begins, with the unicorn seen as a symbol of Christ saving all from the poison of Satan. 

In the third tapestry, The Unicorn Leaps out of the Stream, the hunters, their faces distorted into expressions of cruelty, could symbolize the persecutors of Christ. In the fourth tapestry, The Unicorn at Bay, the unicorn becomes savage. New on the scene is a man with a horn, who may symbolize the archangel Gabriel.

The Unicorn Is Captured by the Maiden, the fifth tapestry, is now in fragments. The remaining pieces show a young female figure and a unicorn within the confines of a walled garden; dogs are attacking the unicorn and blood can be seen running down its side. Tradition says that the unicorn can be trapped only by a virgin, and an enclosed garden was a medieval symbol of chastity. But the apple tree at the tapestry's center could be a reminder of the fall of Adam and Eve, suggesting that the unicorn symbolizes Christ and the tapestry narrative the redemption of humankind after the fall.

The sixth tapestry, The Unicorn Is Killed and Brought to the Castle, centers on the slain unicorn, who is looked upon in distress. The seventh tapestry, The Unicorn in Captivity, is the most famous of the tapestries. Here the unicorn has come back to life but is chained to a wooden gate. The risen unicorn could represent the risen Christ, but there remains the problem of the symbolism of the unicorn in chains. One theory is that the unicorn symbolizes a bridegroom secured by his lover. Another holds that the unicorn (as Christ) is forever linked to humankind.

As with the Song of Songs, the ultimate meaning of the tapestries--whose total number, seven, is a symbol of completion and perfection--continues to elude us. But this very uncertainty has preserved the story of the unicorn and stimulated interest in discovering its true meaning, perhaps as its creator intended.