A Young Woman with a Unicorn

Raphael’s young woman sits before the parapet of a loggia, her body turned towards us and her hands gathered in her lap. Two columns frame a distant, hilly landscape. Her green dress, dark red sleeves and jewelled pendant display wealth. A small unicorn rests within her arms. The pose recalls Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which Raphael encountered during his Florentine years.

Medieval lore held that a unicorn could be tamed only by a virgin, making the animal an emblem of chastity. Together with the costly dress, it supports the possibility that this was a marriage portrait. Yet the animal belongs to one stage in the painting’s history. A later painter covered the woman’s shoulders with a cloak and replaced the unicorn with a spiked wheel and martyr’s palm, turning her into Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Restoration in the 1930s recovered the portrait. Further X-rays in 1960 disclosed a small dog beneath the unicorn, an emblem of marital fidelity. Which version is the true painting?

The restoration recovered Raphael’s portrait from beneath the Saint Catherine additions, while X-rays revealed that the portrait itself had changed. If the painting was made in expectation of marriage, the dog and unicorn connected the sitter with fidelity and chastity. Her steady posture and direct gaze carry her dignity through each version.

When a later painter turned her into Catherine, the promise took another form. Medieval tradition remembered Catherine as a bride of Christ, receiving a ring from him in a vision. The wheel identified the torture prepared for her; the palm marked the martyrdom that followed her refusal to renounce Jesus. The repainting assigned the portrait a different subject and devotional purpose, yet it placed another form of pledged fidelity in the same hands.

A dog, unicorn, and palm represent different moments in the painting’s life. Their sequence leaves me with one question: to whom will I remain faithful when faithfulness comes at a cost?

May I keep the promises I have made.
May I remain faithful when keeping them costs me.

I notice the same hands: first holding a dog, then a unicorn, then a martyr’s palm.

Today, I will keep one promise I have been tempted to neglect.