Hi everybody! My name is Cecilia. I’m an art history student at Harvard,
as well as one of Ho Family Student Guides at the Harvard Art Museums, and I am very
excited to have been invited back by The Met to produce another art-inspired makeup tutorial!
The look you see on my face is based one of the figures in The Hunters Enter the Woods,
one of the seven Unicorn Tapestries at The Met Cloisters.
Dating to around the turn of the sixteenth century, this work forms part of a group of
tapestries that together depict the hunt of a unicorn. Little is known about the commission
and early history of these hangings. Scholars dispute the correct sequence of the tapestries
and have even questioned whether they constitute a single, cohesive set at all.
The tapestries’ meaning is equally enigmatic. The unicorn, which in the Middle Ages was
undisputedly believed to exist, appeared in religious and secular contexts alike,
symbols of Christ but also mainstays of heraldry and lay literature. Thus, there is evidence to
support both theological and secular—especially romantic—readings of this narrative.
The Hunters Enter the Woods is the only work in the group that does not show the unicorn.
For this reason, it is commonly thought to be the first in the cycle,
depicting the hunters before they have fully located their game.
Five figures and their hunting hounds traverse a wooded area as a sixth figure in the upper right
gestures to the group, perhaps signaling that he has spotted their prey, the unicorn.
All seven Unicorn Tapestries are on view in Gallery 17 at The Met Cloisters.
Today’s look is based on the depiction of the leftmost figure in the tapestry. Throughout this
video, I will endeavor to introduce this work, relate one way of thinking about what it shows,
and offer a chance to engage in close looking. I think the act of recreating a work of art,
in makeup or otherwise, helps the eye to see more and to see better, and I hope that after watching
this video, you’ll be inclined to practice close looking next time you look at a work of art!
I’ll strive to describe in detail what I see in the tapestry and how I will
attempt to recreate that on my face, and I’ll offer historical information
that will hopefully contextualize and enrich your experience of the work.
And with that, let’s jump right in!
It may surprise some modern-day viewers to learn that, although this subject may seem
to be a work of utter imagination, many aspects of this tapestry in fact hew very closely to reality.
Chief among these is the rendering of the millefleurs background.
Millefleurs is the term used to describe the background pattern you see here,
which consists of many flowering and/or fruiting plants populating a dark green ground.
In this work and in The Unicorn Rests in a Garden, another tapestry in the series
that has the same style of background, the flowers are so realistically depicted that many
have been identified: of the 101 plant species represented, scholars have been able to identify
at least 85. The plants depicted in The Hunters Enter the Woods include English bluebells,
daffodils, strawberries, and a prominently-situated cherry tree.
Also familiar to the medieval viewer is the notion, perhaps unusual to us,
that the unicorn would have been treated as game.
In the Middle Ages, unicorn horns were thought to possess potent curative properties,
including the ability to purify water, a quality alluded to in one of the other Unicorn Tapestries.
It is because of the value and purported powers of its horn that the creature would have been hunted.
Unicorn horns were among the most highly valued examples of the class of objects
known as mirabilia, also called wonders or marvels. These were objects that seemed to
toe the very limits of the natural world, rare objects prized for their strangeness or
apparent suspension of natural laws: other examples include nautilus shells, “griffin
eggs” (really ostrich eggs) and various minerals thought to possess supernatural properties.
Unicorn horns (since identified as the narwhal teeth commonly called tusks) existed in several
royal and ecclesiastical collections of mirabilia, including one which was famously displayed at
the cathedral of St-Denis outside Paris. Perhaps, then, it need not be unthinkable to us that people
once believed in unicorns—there was, after all, apparent evidence for the creatures’ existence.
Like I said, today’s makeup look will be based on the blonde hunter at the far left of the tapestry.
I’ve already applied a thin layer of white face paint off camera to mimic his pale complexion.
And I’m going to move on to do his eyebrows, which of course look very different from my own.
His brows are dark blonde and made up of short parallel lines that emphasize the “grain” of the
hairs—it’s almost reminiscent of the fluffy, soap brow trend that has recently been popular today.
I’m going to brush up my brows and hold them in place with a clear wax to mimic that texture,
then I’m going to go over them with a blonde brow product to
hopefully tint my eyebrows to be a little bit closer to his color.
Although their existence was unquestioned in the Middle Ages,
unicorns remained far from ordinary creatures. Only a privileged few had access to their horns,
and fewer still ever saw or claimed to see the living beasts themselves.
Unicorns belonged to the very limits of the known world, case studies in the beauty, power,
and diversity of nature—they were creatures not seen directly, but heard of and heard about.
Aristocratic audiences encountered them in literature,
especially, like other natural wonders, in the genres of travel literature and romance.
In the former, unicorns exemplified the exoticism of distant lands—one
notable example of a unicorn sighting can be found in The Travels of Marco Polo. In romance,
the creatures’ reputed attraction to maidens sometimes served as a dreamy metaphor for love.
And here we are. So from here, we’ll move downward to do his eyes. Many of the lines that make up
the figure's facial features are in a cool-toned grey color that I’ll mimic with a taupe-ish grey
pencil. He has large eyes with eyelid creases and undereye bags that I’ll draw on with this pencil,
and some grey-ish shadows throughout his eye area that I’ll emulate with grey eyeshadow.
Finally, his upper lash lines are lined in the same red that appears along his cheek,
his nose, and his lips, which I’ll recreate with red liner.
This tapestry—and the cycle as a whole—might be read as exhibiting some of the characteristics
of courtly romance literature. The unicorn hunt depicted in this series is closely
modeled after the stag hunt, which was both a popular tapestry subject in its own right,
and a commonplace of chivalric romance, where courtship was frequently configured as a hunt.
Moreover, the encyclopedic quality of the millefleurs background
is suggestive of the gardens often featured in tales like these.
One notable such example is the Romance of the Rose, which was possibly the most widely-read
story of the Middle Ages and which featured exuberant descriptions of a luxurious garden.
The fantastical settings and adventures in many medieval romances enlarged readers’
sense of awe and possibility, and perhaps this tapestry works in a similar mode.
And there we go! I think it’s starting to come together.
Now it’s time to recreate the cheeks, nose, and other areas of the face. Most obviously,
there is a thick red line down the figure’s nose and cheek that expresses his profile,
which I’ll recreate in red face paint. The red line on his chin turns into a grey line
about halfway through, which moves up to complete his jaw. And there are more grey lines along the
hollow of his cheek and the side of his nose which express areas of recession in the face.
All of this I’ll recreate in the same grey pencil I used before. And I’ll save all of the
linework around his mouth and chin for last, because I don’t want it to smudge as I talk.
Some elements of this tapestry would have been familiar to the upper-class family who owned it,
while other elements deliberately evoke the realm of fantasy.
In addition to the flowers, for instance, the depiction of the dogs is so verisimilar
as to make the types identifiable—greyhounds and lymers like those depicted here are the actual
dog types that would have been used on late medieval hunts for stag, boar, and other game.
Then again, all of the plants are fruiting or blooming together in a perpetual and
simultaneous spring and harvest—an obvious impossibility. This is a forest that joins
the familiar with the fantastical, one which stimulates the imagination to conjure up
the exotic landscape that a creature as wondrous as the unicorn could inhabit.
And with that, we’re nearly done! The red line on the side of my cheek might be a little
hard to see when I turn my head—if only I were blonde: then it might stand out a little more.
Regardless, we will move on to the final step, the mouth and chin.
The figure’s bottom lip is a little less pink than the top one,
so I’m going to begin by applying a thin layer of white face paint to my bottom lip.
Then I’ll line my lips in a grey pencil to mimic the greyish outline his mouth has,
then use that same pencil to draw the crease coming down from his nose and then those shadows
between his mouth and chin. Finally, I’ll use a silver pencil to finish that cupid’s bow detailing
you can see above the figure’s mouth, and then a red pencil to line the very inner part of my lips.
Perhaps this tapestry, precisely by not depicting the unicorn, reflects the beast as medieval
viewers might have thought about it: a marvelous and princely creature located at the margins
of the natural world, glimpsed only through second-hand sources and the rarefied realms
of travel and romance. A creature at a physical and cognitive distance, largely inaccessible to
direct apprehension—seen through others’ eyes and tantalizing in its remove. A creatures that
signifies the limits of the known, one whose presence causes us to reflect simultaneously
on both the familiar and unfamiliar.
And I think that just about wraps it up. Here I am as one of the hunters from The Hunters
Enter the Woods! Thank you so much for joining me on this exploration of this wonderful tapestry!
If you liked this video, hit the like button, subscribe to The Met’s YouTube channel,
and comment below which Met artwork you’d like to see featured next!
And if you haven’t seen them already, check out my previous art-inspired makeup tutorials
on the Met’s YouTube channel. Finally, if you’d like to share your looks with us on social media,
don’t forget to tag us, @metmuseum, and use the hashtag #MetMakeup. Bye now!
Special thanks to Amelia Roché Hyde, Julia Perratore,
The Met Cloisters, and to everyone else who helped make this video series possible.