Bathing Infant Jesus 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 margins with a butterfly, golden orb, weasel or ferret and a man emerging from a flower. On the verso, beneath rubrics in blue, a prayer to the Virgin Mary opens with the illuminated initial ‘S’ (Saluto te sancta maria Regina celorum) 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 Holy Family shortly after the birth of Jesus. The midwife gives the infant his first bath, an allusion to baptism. Mary takes a quiet moment to read while seated on the ground, evoking both her piety and her humility. Joseph, on the other side of a waddle fence, sleeps near a pot warming over a fire. His associated with domestic duties, physical separation from the Virgin and act of sleeping are all a nod to her perpetual virginity, and contrast Mary’s holiness with his humanity. Her virginity is also extoled in the prayer.