Sublime Beauty: Raphael s Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn

by Esther Bell, Mary Shay-Millea (Contributor), Linda Wolk-Simon (Contributor)

Sublime Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn focuses on one of the artist’s most beguiling and enigmatic paintings and the idendity of the mysterious blonde sitter who epitomized his female portraiture during his Florentine period. Two essays by leading specialists in Renaissance art, Linda Wolk-Simon and Mary Shay-Millea, explore the stylistic relationship between this masterpiece and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and the link to Petrarch’s poetry and popular notions of beauty in Renaissance art. They examine attributions and the painting’s distinct iconography, and why, in place of the usual lapdog, the woman holds a unicorn.

64 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 2015

Reviews

[Julián · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains two easily readable essays on the identity of the woman and on the medieval and Renaissance meaning of beauty. The painting is mesmerizing-best seen in place in Galleria Borghese. It is as mysterious as Gioconda and it is hard to define exactly what makes it a beautiful painting-it is hard to look at the next painting when in the Borghese to be honest and your eyes stay transfixed for some time. Back to the book: I didn't feel that I learned much about the painting nor what makes it great. The essay on the identity of the sitter is probably interesting to someone who is doing research in the history of art I am sure-but I feel I would gain the same by reading the abstract rather than the entire essay. In any case, I understood that there is very little documentation to support any serious evidence (the books ends with a 6 pages essay by the director of Borghese supporting the idea that the sitter is a completely different person.) The second essay on the relation of Petrarchan beauty and this painting is more interesting-although not the main point of the essay it was shocking how different these societies thought about beauty compared to today. It was supposed to be a mirroring of an inner state. There was analogous shallowness back then too-since Petrarch had commissioned a painting (now lost) to visualise the physical attributes of beauty in his poetry and it seems that generations of women in various cities tried hard to emulate this particular painting by adding ancient forms of make up or artificially widening the forehead (as suggested by the painting.) Overall a nice book but a bit more variety on topics would be desirable (maybe by adding a third essay.)

[William West]

Saw the painting and read it's story at the Legion of Honor. The girl's dress and the unicorn were painted over by a Catholic hack to make the girl into a more iconic figure. Only in the 20th century did they discover the hidden painting beneath. That's when an "expert" decided the original work could only be produced by a "genius" such as Raphael. This "seminal work" is, then, only an alleged Raphael.
Whoever made it, it's a hell of a painting. The girl's judgmental, almost reproachful expression has been much discussed, interpreted and reinterpreted, Mona Lisa-style. And whoever painted it had clearly studied Leonardo's piece.
To me, the look in the sitter's eyes seems pretty discernible. She's trying to say, "Fuck y'all and your toy dogs! I've got a fucking baby unicorn, bitches!!!"