Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Images of the unicorn, a white horse with a spiraling horn, permeate contemporary society. The emblem of children’s birthday parties, a symbol for gay pride, the term for a privately held start-up company valued at over $1 billion, the unicorn is appropriated by various groups for multiple meanings. But how did this fantastic creature come to exist in popular visual culture? The earliest reports of the one-horned animal date to the fourth-century BCE text, “Indica,” in which the Greek physician Ctesias writes of ferocious beasts living in India (most likely the rhinoceros). Roman authors Pliny and Aelian embellish their accounts of the bloodthirsty enormity by adding that it grows gentle near the female and can only be captured by a virgin. The Middle Ages interprets these traits as Christian allegory: the virgin is Mary and the unicorn is Christ. Hence, the iconography of the unicorn in medieval bestiaries is that of a white equine figure with a single horn on the forehead to align with Christ’s righteousness and unity with God. This paper investigates the shifting suggestive nature of the unicorn image to examine its significance to society throughout the ages. I show that from tapestries, Renaissance emblems and Early Modern painting to My Little Pony and social media emoji, the image of the unicorn has changed very little since the twelfth century. No longer a symbol for Christ, the unicorn represents all things magical and rare.