A painting trying to bring all the boys to a young girl's yard, because no one's played in it yet if you catch my drift.

Yeah, it's really gross. But it's just the way it is. There's a lot of mystery about this painting. Like, who the young woman is. Could be she's an illegitimate daughter of a pope. Could be she's just from a wealthy family in northern Italy. One thing we know for sure is that the unicorn was originally a lap dog, a hit-you-over-the-head symbol of fidelity. Thus, this was likely originally for mystery girl's wedding. When the wedding fell through, Raphael himself remixed the dog into a unicorn to advertise to new suitors and their families that the girl was still a virgin. 

Why a unicorn? Because apparently they can smell virgin meat. True story. Legends state that unicorns could sniff out virgins. They'd hunt the virgin down and jump in their lap, make it a home for a while. It could be that the unicorn is also a symbol alluding to her heritage from the influential house of Farnese. Their coat-of-arms, after all, sports a 'roid raging unicorn sprouting from the top. Either way, the beautiful young woman has a grip on that unicorn's legs like she ain't letting go of its metaphorical meaning for just anybody.

If looking at the young woman brings up some mighty powerful deja vu, there's good reason. Raphael probably based its composition on the Mona Lisa. Achieving master painter status at the young age of 17, Raphael moved to the popping arts scene in Florence at age 21 to kick his career into high gear. Shortly after the move, Leonardo da Vinci finished the Mona Lisa to great acclaim while Raphael was making huge waves around town. One popular theory is that da Vinci was a mentor, or even father figure, to Raphael during his stay in Florence, giving the young artist a peek at his lifetime's worth of sketches and notes on what makes art great. Either that, or Raphael got a chance to study the Mona Lisa on his own.

Sometime in the 17th century, about 100 years after it was completed, some unknown arse decided to change the entire painting. They put a shawl around the young woman's shoulders and turned the unicorn into a broken wheel and palm frond in her hand, changing the painting into a depiction of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who led a pious life converting folks to Christ until Rome's emperor Maxentius ordered her executed by spiked wheel. When the time came, she touched the wheel and it shattered. It wasn't until 1933 that x-rays brought the truth about her bare shoulders and unicorn to light. Restorers took years to undo the saintly overlay. And it's lucky they did, because if there's one thing fine art is lacking, it's tiny yawning unicorns.