![]() ![]() There’s also something of the outsider about the unicorn. There’s a unicorn on Florence’s Neptune Fountain, indicating the safety of the water within (Mandel 2001: 14). They could “celebrate their beneficence in providing their citizenry with a safe and happy existence” (Mandel 2001: 11). The purity of the unicorn is why rulers often adopted them as a symbol. The Unicorn Defends Itself, one of the series of seven tapestries The Hunt of the Unicorn This creates a lush and abundant paradise through which the unicorn can move. Thus each plant is revealed in its prime, producing an enchanting ensemble of the best that nature has to offer” (Sipress 1973: 180). Yet “the designers and weavers ignored the seasons by juxtaposing plants in flower that ordinarily bloom at different times of the year. The tapestries are mostly accurate in a botanical sense. In it, hunters set out to capture a unicorn. ![]() The Unicorn Tapestries, now held at The Cloisters in New York, is a series of seven tapestries dating to around 1500. Yet this description clearly didn’t stick, as a famous example of Middle Ages weaving can attest. They described the unicorn as being “very small”, the size of a goat’s kid (Mandel 2001: 11). When we move into the 12th century, the bestiaries ditched Pliny’s hybrid model. Was the original unicorn a rhinoceros after all? Medieval Unicorns Matt Simon notes that an Indian rhinoceros also has feet and a tail to match this description (2015). Pliny the Elder described the unicorn as having the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a 3ft long black horn (Mandel 2001: 10). Julius Caesar later decided it lived in Celtic forests (Ryan 2012: 53). The Persians, the Greeks, and Pliny the Elder all argued for the existence of the unicorn in India (Ryan 2012: 53). MS 24, The Aberdeen Bestiary, Folio 15r : Monoceros, England, ca. ![]()
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