Women: from unicorns to pets

PATH OF THE UNICORNS (2023)Painting by Ioana Baltan.

I imagine a beautiful and elegant woman intent on carrying in her designer handbag a cuddly Chihuahua, a four-legged animal with often puffy and extremely expressive eyes, which, despite appearing so small, tender and sweet, manifests itself, at the same time, also unexpectedly aggressive, touchy, protective, annoying and noisy. In fact, I see the aforementioned lady as she moves swiftly through the subway tunnels, only to stop abruptly, almost as if we were not expecting it, once she reaches the destination platform. In this place, the aforementioned little dog will attract the sympathies of many people, to react, unpredictably and without showing any apparent reason, by gnawing some human fingers with her known nervousness. At this point I wondered, in spite of my great sympathy nurtured toward the susceptible above mentioned sudsy dog breed, if there are, within the narrative of art history, less conventional animals, which have oftentimes linked themselves to the depiction of the female figure, presenting themselves in the same way as the ubiquitous and today's purse animals, of which I declare myself a fan without a shadow of a doubt. So, after doing some research I noticed that during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but also in the later Mannerism and Baroque periods, it was very common to juxtapose the woman with a fantastic animal of much larger size than the one described above: the unicorn! The latter four-legged mythological symbol of chastity, wisdom, good fortune and magic, was considered, according to medieval Christian tradition, as the representation of the Virgin fertilized by the Holy Spirit, and then became the bearer of further meanings, alluding to feminine innocence and energy. In addition, myth has it that the unicorn is a millenarian animal, noble and tireless when it has to flee from those who want to capture it, but also extremely sociable, mild and sweet when approached by pure-hearted people, especially virgin girls. All of these popular beliefs inexorably take shape in the figurative arts, as evidenced, as far as the medieval period is concerned, by the woman-unicorn pairing presented by one of the best, most elegant and complex works of dark ages tapestry: the cyclium of The Lady and the Unicorn, a product of Flemish manufacture, which, datable between 1484 and 1500, consists of six panels on a red background, five of them dedicated to the senses, within which the juxtaposition of the female figure with that of the aforementioned animal is to be understood as the exhortation to the restraint of lust and excess, intended to suggest a careful and suspicious approach to sensory seduction, wisely avoided by a patron intent on extolling his own virtuous tendency to prefer the more rational use of reason. 

In fact, the unicorn, when placed next to a girl, represents a purity, which is not entirely indifferent to carnal pleasures, but, which, dominated mainly by chastity, and therefore by the difficult and conscious renunciation of eros, avoids compromising with passion. Reinforcing what has just been stated, Leonardo da Vinci also intervenes, who wrote: "The unicorn, because of his intemperance and not knowing how to win, for the delight he has in damsels, forgets his ferocity and salvateness; putting aside all suspicion he goes to the sitting damsel, and falls asleep in her lap; and the hunters in such a way take him." The words of the great master of the Renaissance allude to the fact, that the aforementioned renunciation of eros, temporary and intended for the premarital period, conceal the temperament of an animal actually quite sexually fiery, so much so that its extreme attraction to maidens, could favor the use of the latter as bait for its capture. If such an attraction Leonardo put it in writing, Raphael makes it known in a celebrated masterpiece, namely the Lady with the Unicorn, a fantastic portrait dated 1505-1506, whose compositional setting is reminiscent of the Mona Lisa by the aforementioned artist. The latter oil on panel depicts a seated girl with her torso rotated between quarters to the left, captured clutching a unicorn, laying her small to snow-white body on a typical noblewoman's attire, enriched by a neat hairdo, a small tiara and a knotted gold chain with a showy ruby pendant and a drop pearl. The elegance of the attire is legitimized by the fact that being portrayed is Giulia Farnese, a maiden from a wealthy family in upper Lazio (Italy), which, originally consisting of soldiers of fortune and noble adventurers, from the end of the 15th century began to occupy positions of prestige thanks to friendships and alliances, which transformed it into an important family of collectors of paintings, sculptures, books, antiquities and figurative arts. As for Giulia, the noblewoman, also known to have been the mistress of Pope Alexander VI, was popular for her renowned loveliness, which earned her among her contemporaries the nickname Giulia the Beautiful, making her the subject of multiple masterpieces, which, oftentimes depicted her with a passionate, fiery and definitely in love unicorn, just as can be seen in Luca Longhi's Mannerist masterpiece titled Lady with Unicorn (1535-1540) and Domenichino's Baroque one: Virgin with Unicorn (1604). Finally, the tale combining art, female figures, and four legs concludes in the description of some paintings by Artmajeur artists, ready to take us back to the incipit of this tale, celebrating decidedly more traditional companion animals.

THE COURAGE OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY (2022)Painting by Faya Kaz.

CAT ON A HOT BLONDE HEAD (2023)Painting by Jamie Lee.

Jamie Lee: Cat on a Hot Blonde Head

The Pop painting by Jamie Lee, a British painter residing in Paraguay, is certainly inspired by the comics stylings of Roy Lichtenstein and the portraits of Andy Warhol, while also probably referring to the less usual images aimed at immortalizing the bond between woman and cat, among which are some masterpieces by such masters as Frederico Barocci, Marguerite Gérard, Felix Vallotton, Kees van Dongen, and Carl Larsson. Indeed, the Artmajeur artist's work provides for the innovative placement of the feline on the head of the effigy, rather than on the latter's legs, as Pierre-Auguste Renoir or Mary Cassatt have more traditionally told us. Such originality brings to mind the example of the unusual presence of the figure of a feline within Barocci's Holy Family (Madonna of the Cat, 1575), or the depiction of the uncommon scene of a breakfast of milk by the kitten immortalized by Marguerite Gérard (The Cat's Lunch, c.1800), but also the "painter" cat by Carl Larsson (The Bridge, 1912) or the one intent on stretching out on a bed by Felix Vallotton (Laziness, 1896). On the subject of Kees van Dongen, however, his painting Woman with Cat (1908) provides us with a vision of a moment that, with a little imagination, may perhaps precede the one immortalized by Lee, in that the bright colors of Fauvism are muted by the blackness of a cat, which, rich in a few shades of blue intended to give luster to its soft fur, reaches out toward the face of the effigy, partially covering it just as if it were determined to move forward to move over her head.

MY BESTIE (2023)Painting by Julia Hacker.

Julia Hacker: My Bestie

Dogs, four-legged best friends par excellence, extremely furry, joyful, affectionate, wagging their tails, often energetic and sometimes full of drool, have been depicted in the company of their mistresses in iconic works, which can be summed up in the most famous model of the genre: A Woman with a Dog (ca. 1769) by Jean Honoré Fragonard, a masterpiece that belongs to the French master's group of fantastical figures, executed with broad, virtuosic and quick brushstrokes aimed at composing the image of the aristocratic hostess Marie Emilie Coignet de Courson, whose dress recalls that of Queen Marie de Médicis, the protagonist of the famous series of paintings by Rubens, studied by Fragonard at the Louvre in 1767. Despite such royalty, the work is imbued with a strong sense of humor, conferred by the contrast presented between the lady's ample proportions and the meager dimension of her little dog, which brings us back for a moment to the purse specimens celebrated above. In addition, a painting slightly later but presenting a similar study of women's fashions in the second half of the nineteenth century, accompanied by an equally small pet specimen, is Lady with a dog (1786), an oil by the American painter Mather Brown. It is precisely such "classical" stylistic features that are strongly opposed by the overlapping figures and transparencies, which characterize My Best Friend, a work by the artist from Artmajeur, who perhaps felt closest to the example of Picasso, and, in particular, that of Woman with Dog, a 1962 masterpiece by the Spanish master, in which the figure Jacqueline Roque, the artist's second wife, is accompanied by their dog Kaboul, both immortalized according to Cubist stylistic features, namely the abandonment of perspective and open form, aimed at piercing figures and objects, letting space flow through them.

SEXY LADY WITH ERMINE (2023)Painting by Sergio Lanna (Sir Joe).

Sergio Lanna: Sexy lady with ermine

Thank goodness!!! And I reiterate: thank goodness! We were lucky, that the animal immortalized by Lanna is a tame ermine and not a fiery unicorn fond of virgins, who, seeing the beautiful undressing lady right next to him, would surely have fallen into temptation even before having contracted marriage. Accordingly, after scapegoating an assured erotic scene, let us turn to the famous origins of Sexy lady with ermine, an undisputed seductive and modern remake of Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an ermine, a masterpiece interpreted in hold-ups and equipped with a showy tattoo dedicated to the Italian master, as if to provide us with an unprecedented Latin lover version of the artist, now transformed into an unforgettable seducer of his provocative models. Briefly describing Leonardo's well-known painting, it depicts Cecilia Gallerani, a cultured Lombard noblewoman of keen intellect, portrayed when she was already the mistress of the Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza at the age of sixteen. Scholars have come to this conclusion precisely because of the presence of the aforementioned animal, since in Greek the ermine is called galè, a name that would thus allude to the maiden's surname, just as it does in another great work by Leonardo, namely the Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, where the model's name is evoked by the lush juniper behind her. In addition, the beast, a symbol of the young woman's purity and incorruptibility, also represents a reference to Ludovico himself, who in 1488 received from the king of Naples the honorary title of knight of the Order of the Ermine. Finally, these assumptions are further supported by the dating of the masterpiece, which experts say was made in the same year as the latter event.