Although the iconographical aspects of these two celebrated series, the first at The Cloisters and the second at the Musée de Cluny, have been covered in numerous publications, the sequence of the tapestries in The Hunt of the Unicorn has been the subject of some controversy, and that of The Lady with the Unicorn is a question that seems not to have been raised so far. Establishing a narrative sequence for The Hunt of the Unicorn is problematic, because among its seven tapestries there are two—The Start of the Hunt and The Unicorn in Captivity—that are in a style entirely different from the others. This fact has been variously interpreted as indicating that these two panels were designed by a different artist, woven in a different workshop, added to the series at a later date, or not part of the series at all. Furthermore, the tale told in the Hunt is composed from two, possibly three, differing and even mutually exclusive versions of the same story. - [Author]

Language: English