Featured on PDR in the collection The Unicorn Tapestries (1495–1505)
Lavishly woven in fine wool and silk with silver and gilded threads, the seven wall hangings collectively known as “The Unicorn Tapestries” are certainly amongst the most spectacular surviving artworks of the late Middle Ages. They are also amongst the most enigmatic, in both meaning and origin. They appear to have been designed in Paris, produced in Brussels or Liège, and for centuries were owned by the La Rochefoucauld family before being purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who donated them to The Met Cloisters in 1937. For a long time now, scholars have noted that the letters “A” and “E” are in several places woven into these pictures, but despite a string of theories — such as the debunked idea that Anne of Brittany…