“Search for
the Unicorn” is an exhibition at the
Cloisters, an arm of the Metropolitan Museum, built in 1937 at
the top of Fort Tryon Park at 195th street in Manhattan thanks to a gift from John
D. Rockefeller, Jr. The current Bulletin from the Metropolitan
Museum is devoted to the Cloisters if you wish to learn more of its
history.
It is a magical space where you can actually
imagine yourself going back in time to the Middle Ages in Europe. It is the
perfect location to imagine the mythical figure of the Unicorn. There is a quote
on the wall of the show which I think is perfect. It is from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “ ‘Well, now that we have seen
each other’ said the Unicorn, “’f you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.
Is that a bargain?’”
I have
been infatuated with this mythical animal with his white coat and single horn
since I was a child when my father took me to the Cloisters where he pointed
out all the works of art that had come through the family's hands. But what I liked the most was this group of
tapestries, known as the Unicorn Tapestries. They were given by Rockefeller just before the
Cloisters opened to the public in 1938. They
tell the story of the hunt for the Unicorn and consist of 7 large tapestries
made in Flanders around 1500. They
represent noblemen and hunters searching for the Unicorn and the maiden
who entraps him. There is so much detail that the flora and
fauna alone are captivating. (A
different series of Unicorn tapestries with
a red background exists at the Musée Cluny in Paris.) One of the Met series is the centerpiece for the current exhibition.
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| Courtesy of the New York Times |
The
Narwhal is a medium sized whale that lives in the arctic. Narwhal Tusks have been known to grow up
to 10 feet long, and were thought to be the horns of Unicorns. As a result they were safeguarded in
churches. The Cloisters have one in their
collection but there is a larger one on loan for the show from a private
collection.
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| Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum |
A piece
that I particularly liked was a Majolica dish with the coat of arms of Matthias
Corvinus (1440-1490) King of Hungry and his second wife, Beatrix of
Aragon, a
princess from Naples. The symbolism of the sleeping Unicorn in the maiden’s lap as she combs him represents the King who has
collapsed in the lap of the maiden who will become his wife.
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| Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum |
I was
surprised to find that the Unicorn could be found in other cultures and religions. In the exhibition there is a silver Torah Crown
from Poland made in the 1778,
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| Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum |
as well as a page from the Shahnama, the 14th century Book of Kings written in early modern Persian. Since the book has
50,000 verses it had been split up at the beginning of the 20th century. Rosenberg & Stiebel sold one of the volumes for a member
of the Rothschild family to a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum who split the
book again, giving one half to the Metropolitan and selling the rest. Iran bought a few pages for many times
what we had sold the entire book for.
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| Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum |
Several
of the other objects in the show came through our hands. I know that one came into the Cloisters’ collections during my tenure at the firm and this was a
wooden box made in the Upper Rhine circa 1300. There are images on both sides
of the box but just one of the Unicorn on the left side. There are over 300 works of art from my family
in the Met but only a fraction of those were sold directly to the museum. Most came through private collections that
were given or bequeathed to the Met.
This particular one we sold to a dealer who had closer ties to the
museum at the time and she sold it to the museum.
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| Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum |
As you walk around the Cloisters you come across still more images of the
Unicorn, a frieze over a doorway made in the Auvergne, France in the early 16th century.
and, of course, the
six other tapestries from the “Hunt of the Unicorn” series in one room all together, enveloping you in the magic
of the Middle Ages.
