Once upon a time, for nearly two thousand years, everybody believed in unicorns. Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, and Julius Caesar were all believers. If people did not believe, we have no way of knowing because they didn’t leave evidence of their doubt. The most well-known evidence of the belief in unicorns are found in the tapestries woven in the fifteenth century, the Lady with the Unicorn at the Cluny Museum in Paris and the Hunt of the Unicorn at the Cloisters in New York.
Lesser known are etchings that I came across in an old book found at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
These were alongside illustrations of credible mammals, and I think if I were reading the book back then, I’d be a believer.
Reblogged this on Free Vintage Illustrations and commented:
And I still believe! And I’m absolutely loving this post too. These old scientific illustrations of unicorns capture that unique moment in time when these creatures were actually studied. I especially love the ram-unicorn hybrid.
*This is a reblog. The images in this reblog were not curated/and or scanned by myself. For the purposes of this reblogged post, these images are for creative inspiration only. Please see the original blog or source for information regarding use.