Daniel Oltean

The capture of a unicorn, miniature in the manuscript Oxford, Bodl. 533  (13th c.), f. 3r, © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, CC BY-NC 4.0, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/36652b63-d9b1-4480-a88b-769d558bf238/surfaces/6b403dae-4c5f-481c-9fd6-7089e4684a16 . Human imagination builds its most beautiful sandcastles on realities it cannot verify. This is the case with the legend of the unicorn, which centers on a fabulous animal everyone has imagined in their own way. Over time,...

R. Magritte, Le château des Pyrénées  (1959), Israel Museum, Jerusalem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rene_Magritte_-_The_Castle_of_the_Pyrenees.jpg . Throughout history, humankind has sought to understand the world and explore the Earth to its furthest boundaries. In the medieval Christian imagination, this natural curiosity was intertwined with the desire to visit, or at least identify, the Paradise, imagined as a physical space situated at the edge of the world. Consequently,...

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The   Marriage Feast at Cana  (1672, detail), © The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, https://barber.org.uk/bartolome-esteban-murillo-1617-1682 . The transformation of water into wine is a miracle attributed to both Christ in the Gospel of John and the god Dionysos in Greek mythology. Since the legends that credit Dionysos with the invention of wine are much older, the miracle at Cana in Galilee has often been...