• Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.13-32
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• 2023

Both the late 15th-century Unicorn Tapestries now at the Cloisters Museum in New York and Daesoon Jinrihoe's Simudo Paintings present a religious narrative through the symbol of the search for an animal that is then subdued. This is now the prevailing scholarly interpretation of the New York Unicorn Tapestries, with the unicorn representing Jesus Christ, although a concurrent reading alluding to human love cannot be excluded. The article examines the New York Unicorn Tapestries according to their Christological interpretation, rooted in traditions about the unicorn popularized by the German medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen, although in fact much older. It then discusses the Buddhist iconographic tradition of ox-herding paintings that represents an antecedent for the Simudo Paintings and notes the latter's differences and similarities with the New York Unicorn Tapestries.