Editing Unicorn (section)

== Entrapment ==
[[File:The Unicorn in Captivity - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[The Unicorn in Captivity]]'', one of ''[[The Hunt of the Unicorn]]'' tapestries, {{Circa|1495}}–1505, [[The Cloisters]]]]
[[File:(Toulouse) Le Vue (La Dame à la licorne) - Musée de Cluny Paris.jpg|thumb|''Sight'', from the {{lang|fr|[[La Dame à la licorne]]}} tapestry set, {{c.|1500}} ([[Musée de Cluny]], Paris)]]
One traditional method of hunting unicorns involved entrapment by a virgin.

In one of his notebooks [[Leonardo da Vinci]] wrote:

{{blockquote|The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.universalleonardo.org/work.php?id=438|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061015075618/http://www.universalleonardo.org/work.php?id=438|url-status=usurped|archive-date=October 15, 2006|title=Universal Leonardo: Leonardo da Vinci online › Young woman seated in a landscape with a unicorn|website=www.universalleonardo.org}}</ref>}}

The famous late [[Gothic art|Gothic]] series of seven [[tapestry]] hangings ''[[The Hunt of the Unicorn]]'' are a high point in [[Europe]]an tapestry manufacture, combining both secular and religious themes. The tapestries now hang in [[the Cloisters]] division of the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in [[New York City]]. In the series, richly dressed [[Nobility|noblemen]], accompanied by huntsmen and hounds, pursue a unicorn against {{lang|fr|[[mille-fleur]]}} backgrounds or settings of buildings and gardens. They bring the animal to bay with the help of a maiden who traps it with her charms, appear to kill it, and bring it back to a castle; in the last and most famous panel, "The Unicorn in Captivity", the unicorn is shown alive again and happy, chained to a [[pomegranate]] tree surrounded by a fence, in a field of flowers. Scholars conjecture that the red stains on its flanks are not blood but rather the juice from pomegranates, which were a symbol of fertility. However, the true meaning of the mysterious resurrected unicorn in the last panel is unclear. The series was woven about 1500 in the [[Low Countries]], probably [[Brussels]] or [[Liège]], for an unknown patron. A set of six [[engraving]]s on the same theme, treated rather differently, were engraved by the French artist [[Jean Duvet]] in the 1540s.

Another famous set of six tapestries of {{lang|la|[[The Lady and the Unicorn|Dame à la licorne]]}} ("Lady with the unicorn") in the [[Musée de Cluny]], [[Paris]], were also woven in the [[Southern Netherlands]] before 1500, and show the five senses (the gateways to temptation) and finally Love ("{{lang|fr|A mon seul desir}}" the legend reads), with unicorns featured in each piece. Facsimiles of these unicorn tapestries were woven for permanent display in [[Stirling Castle]], [[Scotland]], to take the place of a set recorded in the castle in a [[Scottish Royal tapestry collection|16th-century inventory]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Ancient unicorn tapestries recreated at Stirling Castle|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-33237947|website=BBC News|access-date=11 June 2017|date=23 June 2015}}</ref>

A rather rare, late-15th-century, variant depiction of the ''[[hortus conclusus]]'' in religious art combined the [[Annunciation to Mary]] with the themes of the ''Hunt of the Unicorn'' and ''Virgin and Unicorn'', so popular in secular art. The unicorn already functioned as a symbol of the [[Incarnation of Christ|Incarnation]] and whether this meaning is intended in many ''prima facie'' secular depictions can be a difficult matter of scholarly interpretation. There is no such ambiguity in the scenes where the archangel [[Gabriel]] is shown blowing a horn, as hounds chase the unicorn into the Virgin's arms, and a little Christ Child descends on rays of light from God the Father. The [[Council of Trent]] finally banned this somewhat over-elaborated, if charming, depiction,<ref>G Schiller, ''Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. I'',1971 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, pp. 52-4 & figs 126-9, {{ISBN|0-85331-270-2}}, [https://www.sagen.info/forum/media/hortus-conclusus.5313/ another image]</ref> partly on the grounds of realism, as no one now believed the unicorn to be a real animal.

[[Shakespeare]] scholars describe unicorns being captured by a hunter standing in front of a tree, the unicorn goaded into charging; the hunter would step aside the last moment and the unicorn would embed its horn deeply into the tree (See annotations<ref>''The Complete Works of Shakespeare'', Fourth Edition, [[David Bevington]], pg. 1281;''The Norton Shakespeare'', Second Edition, pg 2310, footnote 9; ''[[The Riverside Shakespeare]]'', Second Edition, page 1515</ref> of [[Timon of Athens]], Act 4, scene 3, c. line 341: "wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury".)