The Abduction on a Unicorn (1516): Art, History and Details

The Abduction on a Unicorn (1516) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The volatile mood of this etching starkly contrasts with the abduction scene in Dürer’s Sea Monster. Here, a woman struggles against her male captor as he carries her away on a menacing unicorn with a jagged horn and cloven hoofs. Although unicorns were generally associated with purity, medieval texts also identified the mythical creature as a symbol of evil or death. As with Dürer’s other puzzling scenes of women, scholars have attempted to identify these figures in relationship to classical mythology, in this instance Pluto and Proserpina. This characterization remains vague however; the ominous cloudy sky and savage nature of the event suggests far more sinister circumstances.

Object facts

• Title: The Abduction on a Unicorn
• Date: 1516
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1963.469

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Images of the Mind. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1987.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.