''Portrait of Young Woman with Unicorn'' is a painting by

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...

, which art historians date ''c.'' 1505-1506. It is in the

Galleria Borghese The or Borghese Gallery is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. At the outset, the gallery building was integrated with its gardens, but nowadays the Villa Borghese gardens are considered a separate touri ...

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

History

The painting was originally oil on panel, and was transferred to canvas during conservation work in 1934. It was in the course of this work that overpainting was removed, revealing the

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...

, and removing the wheel, cloak, and palm frond that had been added by an unknown painter during the mid-17th century. The composition of the picture—placing the figure in a loggia opening out onto a landscape, the three-quarter length format—was apparently inspired by the ''

Mona Lisa The ''Mona Lisa'' is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, ...

'', painted by Leonardo between 1503 and 1506. Christof Thoenes observes: "However unabashedly Raphael adopts the pose, compositional framework and spatial organization of the Leonardo portrait...the cool watchfulness in the young woman's gaze is very different" from the "enigmatic ambiguity" of Mona Lisa. The work was of uncertain attribution until recent times. In the 1760 inventory of the Gallery, the subject of the painting was identified as

Saint Catherine of Alexandria Catherine of Alexandria, also spelled Katherine, was, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the emperor Maxentius. According to her hagiography, she was both a princess a ...

and attributed to

Perugino Pietro Perugino ( ; ; born Pietro Vannucci or Pietro Vanucci; – 1523), an Italian Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school, developed some of the qualities that found classic expression in the High Renaissance. Raphael became his most famous ...

. A restoration of the painting in 1934–36 confirmed art historian Roberto Longhi's attribution of the work to Raphael, and the removal of heavy repainting revealed the

, traditionally a symbol of chastity in medieval romance, in place of a Saint Catherine wheel. Restoration work on the painting in 1959 revealed through radiography the image of a small dog, a symbol of conjugal fidelity, under the unicorn. It served as a sketch for the final appearance of the unicorn.

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Young Woman With Unicorn 1506 paintings Paintings in the Borghese Collection Portraits by Raphael Works about unicorns Portraits of women

History

See also

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External links