Local variations could change the unicorn’s meaning, too: a tapestry in the Cluny’s exhibition, on loan from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, reveals that, in the Rhine Valley during the 15th and 16th Centuries, the hunt of the unicorn became associated with the Annunciation. In the tapestry, we see the Archangel Gabriel blowing a horn and holding a hunting dog upon a leash, while a small white unicorn leaps onto the lap of the Virgin Mary, seated in an enclosed garden. The unicorn is thus, says Chancel-Bardelot, “associated with Christ and his purity, free of sin.”

According to Chancel-Bardelot, however, the true “golden age” of the unicorn in Western European art coincided with the late Middle Ages, in the 14th and 15th Centuries – the period that gave birth to the Cluny’s greatest treasure, The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. An elegant white unicorn appears in every one of the six exquisite tapestries in the set. Each also features an opulently dressed noblewoman, accompanied by a lion and (mostly) a lady-in-waiting, all floating against a rich, red background, full of flowering plants and various other animals, including monkeys and rabbits. The meaning of the sixth tapestry, which contains a tent bearing the cryptic inscription Mon Seul Désir (My Sole Desire), continues to be debated today. Scholars agree, though, that the tapestries were woven around 1500 – by which time, the unicorn had become a popular element in heraldry (it is, for example, the national animal of Scotland). The Cloisters museum in New York also boasts a beautiful set of seven magnificent Unicorn Tapestries, likewise probably designed in Paris at the turn of the 16th Century.