The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (from the Unicorn Tapestries)

Around 1500 a hanging like this cost a great household far more than the paintings on its walls. The wool warp carries wool, silk, and wefts wrapped in silver and gilt. The design was drawn in Paris and the weaving done in the Southern Netherlands. Who ordered the seven hangings is unknown. A cipher of the letters A and E is tied into the design, and no document has ever matched it to a patron. One scholar argued for Anne of Brittany and others rejected the idea. The scene is unsettled in the same way. Some read the unicorn as the risen Christ, with the enclosure and the chain left behind him. Others read a bridegroom held willingly, the pomegranate tree above him promising children. Both are readings offered long afterwards, and nothing written at the time explains the picture. What the weavers put there is a chain looped loosely round the neck, a fence low enough for the animal to step over, and red marks on the flank usually explained as juice from the split pomegranates overhead.