SEMINAR

Jules Janick
Department of Horticulture
and Landscape Architecture

Unicorns: Tapestries,
Mysteries, History, Horticulture
Two famous tapestries involve the unicorn: The Lady and the Unicorn
(six tapestries) dating to the 1480s and now located in the Muse de
Cluny in Paris, an allegory of the six senses; and The Hunt of the
Unicorn made between 1490 and 1505 (seven tapestries, one in two
fragments) located in the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan, a branch of the
New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Lady and the Unicorn
series is formal, serene, and static, while the Hunt of the Unicorn is naturalistic, dynamic, and
spirited. Both are overwhelmingly beautiful and represent the high point of the tapestry art form.
Both tapestries incorporate a style popular in French and Flemish tapestry known as millefleur
(thousand flowers) where a mass of flowering herbs and trees are included in the background
giving the tapestries high horticultural interest. In addition to over a hundred herbaceous
ornamentals, the tapestries include 18 fruit and nut plants including small fruits (bilberry,
blackberry, elderberry, and strawberry ); stone fruits (cherry, peach, plum, apricot); pome fruits
(medlar and hawthorn), nuts (hazelnut, oak, stone pine, and walnut), tropical and subtropical fruits
(date, pomegranate. and sour orange), and an ornamental tree (holly). The designer of the Hunt of
the Unicorn tapestries is unknown. The conjecture that they were made to commemorate the
marriage of Anne of Brittany to Louis XII of France in 1499 was first proposed by James J.
Roriman in 1942. If true, a logical designer for the tapestries would have been Jean (Jehan)
Bourdichon (1457-1521), the illustrator and miniaturist associated with the French courts of Louis
XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Franois I, and best known as the illustrator of a personal prayer
Grandes Heures for Anne made between 1503-1508. This conjecture was tested by comparing style
elements including flora and fauna of the tapestry with illustrations in the Grandes Heures. A
cryptic inscription in a horn in Tapestry 2 was rearranged to contain the initials A and reverse E
(prominent in the tapestry) and the names Jean, Jehan, and Bourdichon in anagramatic form. The
totality of the evidence makes it plausible that Jean Bourdichon or his workshop were intimately
associated with the tapestry.

February 26th, 3:30 pm HORT 117

Reception at 3:10 pm HORT 117
If you are interested in meeting with the speaker, please contact Jennifer Deiser at 41301 or
jdeiser@purdue.edu

Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture