The Unicorn Tapestries: Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 32 ...

Especially beautiful in The Start of
the Hunt are fragrant sweet violets
( lower left ), among the most cherished
flowers of medieval times. Early
writers tell how Adam and Eve
walked in the Garden of Eden where
violets and roses and lilies grew; one
poet describes the virgin martyrs
wandering through fresh fields of
Paradise, "Gathering roses red for the
Passion, lilies and violets for love."
The violet was frequently associated
with the Virgin Mary and with humility,
one of her most admired virtues.
This flower appears in different hues
in all the Unicorn Tapestries except
the fifth. Here the simple, schematic,
slightly rigid blossoms from the first
tapestry are compared with violets
from the sixth ( above ), which have a
greater naturalness and three-dimensionality
characteristic of that
tapestry as a whole.