Virgin and Child 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. A prayer to the Virgin Mary concludes on the recto, illuminated in the margin with a bird and two wild men churning a barrel held aloft a cross-shaped base. On the verso, a prayer to the Virgin Mary opens with the illuminated initial ‘S’ (Sancte Maria mater domini nostri iesu Christi) painted with white, red, blue and gold ivy-leaf ornament. It is one of a series of twenty-six prayers to the Virgin Mary in this section of the manuscript. The great many devotions and miniatures dedicated to her is rather unusual. The miniature is painted in demi-grisaille with pigments and gold and depicts the Madonna and Child seated on a cushion in an oratory or chapel. The setting emphasises her piety. The composition would have suited a donor portrait, but instead of an image of Prigent an angel kneels before an open book playing the harp. Another angel plays the double pipe in the background. The Christ Child holds white flowers, a symbol of Mary’s perpetual virginity. The scene in the lower margin is probably a reference to the Passion. The two wild men who poke at a wine barrel atop a cross-shaped base are perhaps stand-ins for the sponge-bearer and spear-bearer.