(Raphael) Raffaello Santi . (Raphael) Raffaello Santi - Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn www.pinterest.com

The enigma of ‘Portrait of a Lady With a Unicorn’ . The exhibition “Sublime Beauty,” which opened to the public Saturday, Jan. 9, at the Legion of Honor, comprises a single painting, grandly presented in its own ample room. Seen through a doorway at the end of a procession of museum galleries, barely more than 2 feet in height, “Portrait of a Lady With a Unicorn” (ca. 1505-06) commands attention from 100 yards off. If you had the good fortune to see the work without the crowds that will inevitably attend, you might study the picture for a half hour or more: its crystalline, almost mineral quality of detail and color; its startling sense of shared space with the sitter, close on a small porch, together at the edge of a vast and almost featureless terrain. The unnatural slope of her shoulders, a fiction often maintained by Renaissance artists, softens her steely posture, just as the unicorn’s feline paws — not hooves — confirm that it is capable of being tamed. The narrative mysteries of the picture’s content and the technical attractions of its execution are enough to recommend it as an experience not to be missed. Remarkably, the work was heavily over-painted in the 17th century, turning it into a depiction of St. Catherine of Alexandria, complete with a cloak covering her shoulders and sleeves, a palm frond and — replacing the unicorn — the broken torture wheel with which Catherine is traditionally associated. In the 1930s these painted additions were removed, creating new debate about the quality of the restoration; then X-rays revealed that before the unicorn, a dog symbolizing fidelity was shown in her arms. www.sfgate.com

Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn . The artwork Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn - Raffael (eigntl. Rafaello Santi) we deliver as art print on canvas, poster, plate or finest hand made paper. You define the size yourself. www.art-prints-on-demand.com

Sublime Beauty: Raphael's Portrait of a Lady With a Unicorn . For centuries, an unsigned portrait of a beautiful young woman at Rome's Galleria Borghese remained shrouded in mystery. Now a focus exhibition at San Fr... www.huffpost.com