Birth of the Virgin 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. Beneath rubrics in blue, the five joys of the Virgin Mary opens with the illuminated initial ‘A’ (Ave cuius conception solemni plena gaudio) painted with white, red, blue and gold ivy-leaf ornament (most of the gold is lost). It is one of an unusually large series of forty-seven suffrages, or short prayers dedicated to the saints, arranged hierarchically. The section opens with prayers to the Trinity, Virgin Mary, Archangel Michael and John the Baptist, followed by the Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors and Virgins. The miniature is painted in demi-grisaille with pigments and gold and depicts the Birth of the Virgin, set in an ornate fifteenth-century French bedroom. St Anne passes the swaddled infant to a midwife. Mary is already crowned as the future Queen of Heaven. Two other midwives or assistants fill a bath and test the water. Two angels emerging from flowers either side of a vase of roses inhabit the lower margin, a sign of the sacred nature of the scene above. Both the rose and the violet, in the right margin, are symbols of the Virgin Mary.