Musings of the Lady in the Missing Panel of the Unicorn Tapestries

My poem published in The Alchemy Spoon

Welcome to all my new subscribers. I’m so glad you’re here and I am very excited to share my new poem with you.

‘The Unicorn Rests in a Garden’ from The Unicorn Tapestries in the Met Cloisters, New York

There is a little backstory to this poem.

When I was living in New York, studying medieval literature, one of my haunts was The Cloisters, the Met’s museum for medieval art and culture in Fort Tryon Park.

The Cloisters Museum

I was first introduced to the Cloisters by my friend and fellow medievalist, MK. I found it almost like stepping into another world. It seemed so out of place and out of time and yet so absolutely itself in the serenity of Fort Tryon Park. It resonated with me not only for the medieval architecture and setting, but also because it is in a sense a transplant, inhabiting layers of place and time, permeable and yet permanent, present and imbued with nostalgia. You could take the 1 train up there and soak up the peace of it, then be transported back down to the jostle of the city.

The Unicorn Tapestries (1495-1505) are undoubtedly the jewel in the crown of the Met Cloisters’ medieval collection. It is impossible not to be drawn to the intricate artistry and the enigma of these beautiful tapestries. Scholars are not certain about the order or sequence of events — ‘The Unicorn at Rest’ may be the last or the first panel or even meant as a separate stand-alone piece. Are the marks on the unicorn’s sides blood from the hunt or juice from the pomegranates in the tree above? Whose initials — AE — are in the tree? And there is the missing panel, of which we have only fragments, thought to depict a maiden subduing the unicorn.

Fragments of the fifth panel of the Unicorn Tapestries, ‘The Unicorn Surrenders to a Maiden’

The female figure in the fragment above signals to the man behind that the unicorn has been tamed. The only remains of the maiden pacifying the unicorn are her right arm, in red (bottom right), and the fingers of her right hand stroking the unicorn’s mane. It is the missing lady who inspired my poem, her invisibility opening a space to think about artistic paradoxes, the art of the past and the appropriation of cultural artefacts.

As well as looking carefully at The Unicorn Tapestries online, I also took inspiration from similar work from this era like The Lady and the Unicorn in the Cluny Museum, France. I imagined the dress of my Lady as similar to that of the lady in the image below, not red as the sleeve in the fifth panel suggests. I’ll plead artistic licence for that one.

The Lady and the Unicorn from The Cluny Museum

Well, that was a long preamble to a poem but I hope it sets the scene.

Here is the poem with grateful thanks to The Alchemy Spoon for publishing. Print copies of the issue are available from Clayhanger Press.

For more about The Unicorn Tapestries

You can read about the fascinating history of the Met Cloisters here

The Met Cloisters description of The Unicorn Rests and The Unicorn Surrenders to the Maiden.

A useful overview of The Unicorn Tapestries from PDR