Virgin and Child in a garden 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 the overpainted single charge of de Coëtivy in an elliptical cartouche, an angel playing the lute and a female supplicant in prayer, both emerging from flowers. On the verso, beneath rubrics in blue, a prayer to the Virgin Mary in French opens with the illuminated initial ‘T’ (Tres douce uierge pucelle marie mere de iesu crist) 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 in an enclosed garden (hortus conclusus). The setting alludes to her role as the gateway to Paradise. She is seated on the ground to signify her humility and reading to indicate her piety. The teetering toddler picks flowers with the assistance of angels who collect them in baskets. In the foreground, before the low wall of the garden, grows what appears to be a lily, a symbol of purity associated with the Virgin Mary.