3. Italian Painting (13-18th c.)

The fairy-tale like scene taking place in the flower-strewn clearing in the midst of a dark forest still recalls the atmosphere of the late International Gothic. The maiden embracing the unicorn is an allegory of purity or chastity. The Physiologus, a second-century moralizing text on natural history written in Greek, says that the unseizable animal could be tamed by a virgin only: the animal became meek at her sight and laid its head in her lap where the hunters could easily capture it. The church fathers equated the unicorn with Christ and the maiden with Mary. The story thus received a Christian interpretation: it referred to the Saviour, incarnated in the womb of the virgin and captured by his earthly pursuers. The horn became a symbol of divine strength, the unity with the Father and the all-penetrating Word of God. A great number of illustrations of this popular medieval subject survive. In them, the maiden or the Virgin Mary herself often appears in a closed garden symbolic of virginity. The enclosing forest has a similar meaning in this picture. The work may have originally been inserted into the wainscot of a secular residence. To judge from his style, the unknown painter must have worked under the influence of the Venetian Antonio Vivarini. He received his conventional name after a series showing the story of Paris and Helen in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.