Funeral Procession from the Coëtivy Hours

Dunois Master, attributed to

Folio with three-quarter page miniature from a book of hours attributed to the Dunois Master, written in Latin and French in a bastarda script, made in Paris and dated 1443–1445. It was commissioned by Prigent de Coëtivy (1399?–1450) on the occasion of his marriage to Marie de Rais (1429–1457). Removed from the bound volume between 1933 and 1960. The Litany is followed by the Office of the Dead, read immediately before the requiem or funeral Mass, with Vespers read on the night before and Matins and Lauds on the day of the Mass and burial. In this manuscript, the Office is unusually illuminated with not one but six miniatures. Beneath rubrics in red, the fourth lesson from Matins for the Office opens with the illuminated initial 'Q' (Quantas habeo iniquitates et peccata) painted with white, red, blue and gold ivy-leaf ornament. The miniature is painted in demi-grisaille with pigments and gold and depicts a funeral procession through a city to the graveyard. The draped coffin is surrounded by priests, deacons, relatives and black-hooded mourners. Some of these figures wear shields ornamented with a gold lion rampant on a field of blue, some carry candles adored with the same heraldic device. Additional mourners in the margins hold candles and ring bells. The mourners are absent from the margins of the verso, which is inhabited instead by a rabbit on a mound and a lion climbing the left border.