The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries

The hyperlink below shows the six panels that make up The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries housed at the Cluny Museum in Paris.

http://homepages.luc.edu/~avande1/unicorn.html

The red background and the "thousand flowers" create a stunning backdrop for the six tapestries that deal with the five senses and a sixth one called "My Only Desire." The "My Only Desire" panel remains ambiguous for me. You cannot tell if the lady in the panel is placing jewels in a chest or taking them out of the chest. A unicorn is present in all of the panels. Considering the unicorn offers an explanation for the "My Only Desire" panel.

James Hall in the Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (Harper & Row, 1974) refers discussion of the unicorn to an entry on the Virgin and the Unicorn. Hall writes:

The Unicorn, associated in remote antiquity with the worship of a virgin mother goddess, was early linked with the idea of the virginity of Mary and Christ's Incarnation. A medieval bestiary based on the Greek Physiologus of about the 5th century reads...'And, thus did our Lord Jesus Christ, who is a unicorn spiritually, descent into the womb of the Virgin.' The legend of the mythical beast, whose horn had the power of purifying whatever it touched, and which could not be captured except by a virgin was adopted as a Christian allegory in spite of its unmistakable phallic overtones. [p. 329]

This interpretation of the unicorn in Christian iconography is supported by George Ferguson in his Signs & Symbols in Christian Art (Oxford University Press, 1954)

Hall further provides a context for the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries that makes their meaning clearer:

As a profane allegory of chastity, the virgin and the unicorn are found in late medieval and Renaissance tapestry, generally woven on the occasion of a betrothal, and on the panels of Italian cassoni (brides' marriage chests). Unicorns draw the chariot of chastity personified. [p.328].

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries housed at Cluny are plausibly betrothal tapestries, which literally refer to the bride's chastitiy. The presence of the unicorn in the "My Only Desire" panel may refer to a mystic meaning as well, since the unicorn purifies what it touches. If we like the Lady prefer the riches of nature to the jewels that the Lady is placing in the chest, then we are truly rich; this preference is what makes us pure.

Sources:

Dictionary of Subjects in Art by James Hall

La Dame a la Licorne by Alain Erlande-Brandenburg

Signes and Symbols in Christian Art by James Ferguson