My sole desire c1500, from the The lady and the unicorn series, wool and silk, 377 x 473cm. Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Photo © RMN-GP / M Urtado.
Sight c1500, from the The lady and the unicorn series, wool and silk, 312 x 330cm. Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Photo © RMN-GP / M Urtado.
Touch c1500, from the The lady and the unicorn series, wool and silk, 373 x 358cm. Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Photo © RMN-GP / M Urtado.
Hearing c1500, from the The lady and the unicorn series, wool and silk, 369 x 290cm. Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Photo © RMN-GP / M Urtado.
Taste c1500, from the The lady and the unicorn series, wool and silk, 377 x 466cm. Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Photo © RMN-GP / M Urtado.
The six medieval French tapestries known collectively as The Lady and the Unicorn cycle are a conundrum. They are a familiar pop-cultural phenomenon: we’ve seen them in the Harry Potter films, or have read about them in works by writers as diverse as George Sands, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Tracy Chevalier. Yet they remain resolutely enigmatic.
Maud Page, deputy director of AGNSW, acknowledges that it is impossible to totally comprehend The Lady and the Unicorn today: the medieval European mindset was simply too different. As she explains, “The tapestries are riddled with allegorical meanings that have changed over time; in our age many of them have disappeared.”
Made circa 1500, what we do know, Page says, is that as the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, The Lady and the Unicorn “charts human thought, society, and politics of the time.” Five tapestries seem to illustrate the senses: touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing. Page points out that while this may indicate a cultural shift from strict moral codes towards earthly love, the sixth is perhaps the most intriguing. It bears the inscription, À mon seul désir (my only desire) which Page says may emphasise the individual and “a little bit of free will.”
But the fact that we can’t fully understand these vibrant red tapestries with their millefleur (thousand flowers) backgrounds makes them more interesting, not less. “I think we get a little bored when everything is so dictated, predicted, or totally known,” Page says. With The Lady and the Unicorn “people come in and really create their own narrative about the work.”
The tapestries are on loan from the Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris.
The Lady and the Unicorn
Art Gallery of New South Wales
10 February – 24 June
Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890–1940, co-curated by the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, celebrates 50 Australian women artists who travelled to Europe during the early 20th century.
Curator and proud palawa/pallawah woman, Dr Jessica Clark’s latest exhibition In the air at The Substation connects First Nations and non-First Nations artists in a response to human consumption and environmental destruction through reflection, resistance and redirection.
Elysha Rei’s exhibition Shirozato to Shinju (White Sugar and Pearls) at Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, Townsville QLD, explores the interconnected histories of the Japanese diaspora in Australia.
Phuong Ngo’s first major solo exhibition Inheritance, now showing at West Space, spans generations and continents, incorporates objects bought and sold across family lines, and draws on both spiritual and everyday rituals.
Congratulations to Julie Fragar, who has won the 2025 Archibald Prize for Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), her portrait of fellow artist and colleague Justene Williams.
Described as “a space for reflection, remembrance, and the sharing of truth”, Kattidj Nagãr, now showing at John Curtin Gallery, is dedicated to the Aboriginal people who once resided at the Carrolup Settlement in Western Australia.
