The Unicorn Tapestries: Religion, Mythology, and Sexuality in Late Medieval Europe

Abstract

The Unicorn Tapestries are a set of seven tapestries, located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters in New York, of Parisian design and woven in the Southern Netherlands in the late Middle Ages. It has baffled scholars for decades. These tapestries are shrouded in mystery, especially considering their commissioner, narratives, and sequence of hanging. However, for whom and how they were made is of little importance for this study. The most crucial question to be asked is: why the unicorn? What was the significance of the unicorn during the late Middle Ages? The goal of this thesis is to explore the evolution of the unicorn throughout the Middle Ages as well as important monarchal figures and central themes of aristocratic society during the period in which the tapestries were woven. Only then can some light be shed on the mystery of why this mythological beast was chosen as the ultimate symbol of chivalry, knighthood, heraldry, and Christ.