St John and the poisoned chalice 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, a prayer to St John the Evangelist opens with the illuminated initial ‘I’ (Iste est Johannes qui super pectus domini in cena) painted with white, red, blue and gold ivy-leaf ornament (much 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 a number of prefatory prayers, followed by the Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors and Virgins. The miniature is painted in demi-grisaille with pigments and gold and depicts St John and the poisoned chalice, a legend which tells how a priest at the Temple of Diana in Ephesus challenged John to prove his faith by drinking a cup of poison. John blessed the chalice and the poison emerged in the form of a snake or dragon. He also restored the life of two condemned men who already drank from the cup, illustrated by the figure on the floor. John holds both the chalice and the palm of a martyr. The priest holds a wand, a common attribute of pagans employed both as a sign of authority and a belief in false gods. The saint’s martyrdom is illustrated in the lower margin. According to the Golden Legend, a popular collection of hagiographies (saints’ lives), John was brought to Rome at the direction of the Domitian (r. 81–96 AD), perhaps the figure on the right. He was thrown in a vat of boiling oil from which he miraculously survived unharmed. The executioner ladles hot oil over his head but the saint remains calm and in prayer. A coat of arms in an elliptical cartouche, overpainted with the single charge of Alain de Coëtivy, is found in the right margin.