Online lecture: Millamari Kalliola

05.03.2026

16.15—17.30

Teams

Lecture free of charge

A woman dressed in red and blue is holding ternderly a dead, bearded man in her arms.
Cornelis Buys the Younger, Pietà, early 16the century, oil on panel, Gösta Serlachius Finer Arts Foundation. Photograph: Sampo Linkoneva.
Enter the lecture on Teams on 5 Mar at 4.15 pm here

Allegorical unicorn hunting in 15th–16th century art

Catching and hunting a unicorn were common allegorical motifs in the art of the 15th and 16th centuries. According to accounts, the hunters only caught the animal with the help of a pure virgin. In Christian allegory, hunting was compared to the incarnation of Christ, but also to sacrificial death, as the unicorn symbolised Christ and the virgin his mother, the Virgin Mary.

The motifs depicting the killing of the unicorn are very reminiscent of the Pietá motifs, in which the Virgin Mary holds the dead Jesus in her arms. A good example is a work by Cornelis Buys the Younger from the early 16th century, which is part of Serlachius’ collection. The lecture compares the work with the allegorical meanings of the unicorn hunting theme in the art of the 15th and 16th centuries. The lecture is given in Finnish language.

Millamari Kalliola

Millamari Kalliola, MA, is a doctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä. Her doctoral research focuses on unicorn motifs in late medieval limestone paintings in the churches of Finland and Sweden.

The Encrypted Language of Images – Lecture Series Symbols and Stories the 15th trough 17th Century Art

The Encrypted Language of Images is a series of five free online lectures organised by Serlachius and the University of Jyväskylä in cooperation. The addresses by art history experts are aimed at everyone interested in viewing images and their history. The lecture series focuses on art from the 15th and 17th centuries. 

The presentations shed light on what kind of symbols and allegories art has used or what the details of the paintings tell us about the thinking and culture of the era. We also get a glimpse of how colours were mixed in Rembrandt’s time.

A special area of strength of the Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation’s collection is its collection of old European art, which is significant and rare in Finland. It contains about a hundred works from the 1500s and 1700s. The collection includes Dutch, Flemish, Italian and Spanish art.