(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?

Here is a picture of ze tapestry i’m writing about…

The Unicorn Tapestries, VII: The Unicorn in Captivity                                           Anna Rosskopf 

The Unicorn Tapestries, VII: The Unicorn in Captivity is a vast tapestry created by an unknown artist. As mysterious as its origins may be, it has been concluded that this tapestry was made between the years 1495 and 1505. The artwork is woven with wool warp and wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts. The design is thought to have come from Paris, though not created there. The dimensions of the tapestry are 12 ft. 1 in. by 8 ft. 3 in. It is a vertical composition. The Unicorn in Captivity now resided in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as part of the Cloisters Collection.

In the tapestry, there is a cream-colored unicorn in the center facing left. Around its neck rests a heavy black collar. The unicorn appears to be lying down on the ground. An extremely long white, spindly horn protrudes from the top of the animal’s head. The horn is about as long as the length of the unicorn’s body. One ear, the left one, is visible on the head of the unicorn. The slightly wavy mane of the unicorn is relatively short and the same cream-white color as the animal. A tan wooden fence surrounds the unicorn. The fence forms a tight circle around the animal. Eleven visible stakes make up the fence. They are connected by three levels of horizontal slats of wood. A tree stands inside the fence, behind the unicorn. The bottom part of the tree, including where it intersects the ground, is not visible, due to the unicorn lying in front of it. The trunk is thin, and a yellow green color. The top of the tree branches out in a narrow space and ends in clusters of leaves that resemble green daisies with dull yellow middles. The entire background of the tapestry is mostly dark green. This is because it is grass adorned with many flowers and plants. The flowers are mostly colorful dots and green lines, for the leaves. The colors of the flowers are pink, blue, red, yellow, white, lavender, and of course, green.

In The Unicorn in Captivity, the most obvious shapes are the three ellipses created by the fence in the middle of the artwork. One of them is along the top of the fence; one is in the interior of the fence where the unicorn lies; one is along the bottom of the fence. The horn on top of the unicorn’s head makes a very tall, very thin cone shape. The thin tree behind the unicorn is a tall, skinny cylinder. Also, many of the flowers and plants appear as small, colorful circles.

Everything has an outline; therefore, everything has lines. Straight lines are shown on the horn, the tree, the fence’s wooden stakes, the unicorn’s limbs, and the underside of the unicorn’s jaw. Everything else, including the outline of the unicorn’s body, the collar on its neck, the horizontal slats of wood in the fence, the leaves of the plants, the branches of the tree, the petals and flowers, the unicorn’s tail, the unicorn’s goatee, the visible left ear, and the unicorn’s mane, forms curved lines. The tail of the animal makes spiral shapes with the hair at its end, and the actual tail creates a ‘U’ shape. The goatee has the same effect: its silver hairs curl into spirals.

The most obvious value is the white of the unicorn in the center of the tapestry. From the tip of its pointy horn to the curl of the pearly tail, the animal in the middle is the lightest color, as well as the focal point of the tapestry. Overall, the background is of dark value. The area behind the daisy-like leaves of the tree is very dark green. This is the darkest value in the piece. Also, near the edges and corners of the tapestry the green color becomes gradually darker. There are very minor shadows displayed, making it difficult to decipher which direction the light is coming from. There is somewhat of a spotlight in the center, one could say, bearing down on the unicorn as if from the heavens. The darker edges and corners of the artwork also indicate that the light may be directed towards the middle of the tapestry. There are slight shadows cast on the wooden fence from other parts of the fence, and on the unicorn’s belly and areas where the light is obscured from above.

There are possibly hundreds of different colors in The Unicorn Tapestries, VII: The Unicorn in Captivity. It appears that every color could have been mixed with another to form a new color. The white of the unicorn, in some spots, appears to be darker, like in shadow. The shades blend together to form an even color of the hair. The overall body of the unicorn is tinged a cream color, and it even looks yellow in some places. The fence enclosing the animal is a tan, light brown color, darker on some slats of wood and lighter on others. The background is such a dark shade of green, it is almost black. Near the top of the tapestry, the ground under the flowers becomes a color which is safe to call “The only color closer to black than black itself.” Most of the green leaves of the plants have yellow tinges to them, displaying highlights. The flowers in the middle portion of the tapestry appear to have lighter colored leaves and stems compared to the plants in the top and bottom sections of the tapestry. Some of the flowers are peach-colored, yellow, off-white and cream, a light tint of orange, blue-violet, and other varying shades of the above-mentioned colors. The trunk of the spindly tree is a prominently yellow-green color, but a very dull one at that. The leaves of the daisy-like tree are a faded green color. The yellow centers of the tree daisies are a sickly color, slightly tinged with green and possibly gray.

In front of the tree that protrudes from the ground behind the unicorn, there are two brown letters that intertwine around the trunk. They may be vines, but with no leaves, or possibly a rope. An “A” is visible on the left side of the tree, and a character that resembles a backwards letter “E” is on the right. Their height is about ½ of the tree trunk’s height. The small line that connects the two sides of the ‘A’ is pointed into a small “V” shape, and there is a horizontal line on the topmost point of the A, extending on either side. The ends of this line are forked into two very tiny and short lines, as are the ends of the diagonal lines of the A. The backwards E has no right angles, but instead, the vertical backbone of the E curves into a backwards C shape. Each of the horizontal lines of the E is forked at the ends exactly like those on the line on top of the letter A. A thin, curving brown line forms a tiny loop in the air just above where the tree begins to divide into separate branches. Below that, there is an even smaller loop made by the rope which is connected to the first. Two brown lines exit the latter; the one on the left passes over the branch on the left side in a southwest diagonal line. The line on the left is symmetrical to the one on the left, continuing in a downwards, southeast direction. The left line touches the right diagonal line of the A, next to the bottom point of the tiny letter V that connects the sides of the A. The brown line on the left touches the top of the middle horizontal line of the E, about 1/3 of the width of the middle line. These two thin, brown lines appear to bounce off the letters in a right angle from which they came. The right one continues until it reaches the edge of the tree trunk, below where the A ends, and curves back in an elongated U-turn shape, but doesn’t return to the E. It flattens into a slightly curved horizontal line, jutting out from the right side of the tree towards the right side of the painting. As it reaches the nearest stake of the fence, the line curves under itself, almost as if to make an ‘O’, but doesn’t quite complete it. The end of the line ends in a thick, leaf shape, which is also brown. The original, left brown line that has bounced off the A mirrors the right line and curves in exactly the same way. These initials are repeated in the upper left and right corners of the tapestry, as well as in the lower right corner. The curved lines beneath these sets, though, form wider loops instead of curling tightly like the ones on either side of the tree.