The gate of the year

Embroidered cushion panel, composed with different fabrics (wool, cotton, linen and silk), of Austrian manufacture, datable between 1500 and 1510, now in the Historic Museum of Basel, Switzerland.
The picture shows a Wild Woman, the female counterpart of the Wild Man, with a Unicorn.
The Unicorn is an imaginary animal known since Antiquity (it was mentioned by Aristotle, Elian and Pliny the Elder) but it was above all in the Middle Ages that its iconography found wide diffusion. In the Physiologus, a text written in Greek by an unknown author in Alexandria of Egypt, between the II and IV century A.D., containing the symbolic description of various animals, the Unicorn is described as “a small animal like the kid, is exceedingly shrewd, and has one horn in the middle of his head”. It is also said that the hunters cannot approach it because of its extraordinary strength, so they employ a peculiar stratagem. “Hunters place a chaste virgin before him. He bounds forth into her lap and she warms and nourishes the animal and takes him into the palace of kings” (Curley 1979: chap. XXXVI). Christian symbolism has interpreted the Unicorn taking refuge in the lap of a virgin as an image of Christ’s incarnation. However, other versions of this tradition shows that this hunting technique was based on a sort of sexual attraction exercised by the maiden on the animal, demonstrating the presence of pre-Christian elements in the image of this fantastic animal (Shepard 1967), justifying its contiguity with characters, like the Wild Man, who embodied the fertilizing and vitalizing power belonging to the world of nature.
The Wild Woman, like her male equivalent, is represented in this picture as the image, sweetened and softened, of the fecundating power of nature, which can sometimes penetrate into the human world. Motif quite diffused in the tapestries of 1400s and 1500s is the Wild Man’s family, living in a bucolic environment, which they share with fantastic animals, wild beasts and bears.

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wildweibchen_mit_Einhorn.jpg]




Wild Men

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Embroidered cushion panel, composed with different fabrics (wool, cotton, linen and silk), of Austrian manufacture, datable between 1500 and 1510, now in the Historic Museum of Basel, Switzerland. The picture shows a Wild Woman, the female counterpart of the Wild Man, with a Unicorn. The Unicorn is an imaginary animal known since Antiquity (it was mentioned by Aristotle, Elian and Pliny the Elder) but it was above all in the Middle Ages that its iconography found wide diffusion. In the Physiologus, a text written in Greek by an unknown author in Alexandria of Egypt, between the II and IV century A.D., containing the symbolic description of various animals, the Unicorn is described as “a small animal like the kid, is exceedingly shrewd, and has one horn in the middle of his head”. It is also said that the hunters cannot approach it because of its extraordinary strength, so they employ a peculiar stratagem. “Hunters place a chaste virgin before him. He bounds forth into her lap and she warms and nourishes the animal and takes him into the palace of kings” (Curley 1979: chap. XXXVI). Christian symbolism has interpreted the Unicorn taking refuge in the lap of a virgin as an image of Christ’s incarnation. However, other versions of this tradition shows that this hunting technique was based on a sort of sexual attraction exercised by the maiden on the animal, demonstrating the presence of pre-Christian elements in the image of this fantastic animal (Shepard 1967), justifying its contiguity with characters, like the Wild Man, who embodied the fertilizing and vitalizing power belonging to the world of nature. The Wild Woman, like her male equivalent, is represented in this picture as the image, sweetened and softened, of the fecundating power of nature, which can sometimes penetrate into the human world. Motif quite diffused in the tapestries of 1400s and 1500s is the Wild Man’s family, living in a bucolic environment, which they share with fantastic animals, wild beasts and bears. [Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wildweibchen_mit_Einhorn.jpg]