Ending with the Cloisters were a great way to bring our museum journey to an end. I never thought I would become so excited about Medieval artwork, until I experience the Cloisters and its Unicorn Tapestries. The Tapestries told the story of the hunt of the mythical Unicorn. Nathaniel our guide brought us around the room to each Tapestry and told us the background of each Tapestry panel. The first began with the release of the Unicorn, and the hunt beginning. As we moved around the room, the Unicorn grew tired and the hunters drew closer. The Unicorn is shown wounding one of the hunter’s hounds and kicking on in the stomach. The capture of the Unicorn is later shown by using a beautiful woman to lure itself to sacrifice itself for the sake of the woman. The last panel shows the Unicorn happy in captivity.
One point that our guide Nathaniel made was the relation between the Unicorn Tapestries and the story of Jesus Christ. The image of the Unicorn with twelve men in the garden, the possibility of the Unicorn’s rebirth in the last Tapestry, and other religious images that he outlined blew my mind. 