Crucifixion of St Andrew 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 red, a prayer to Andrew the Apostle opens with the illuminated initial ‘D’ (Doctor bonus et amicus dei Andreas ducebatur ad crucem) painted with white, red and blue ivy-leaf ornament (most of the gold is lost). It is one of an unusually large series of forty-seven suffrages, or short prayers 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 the Crucifixion of St Andrew. According to the apocryphal Acts of Andrew and recorded in the Golden Legend (a popular collection of hagiographies) Andrew was executed at the direction of Aegeas, the proconsel of Patras (Greece). He was bound not nailed to the cross which, according to later iconographic tradition, was saltire, or X-shaped. The two executioners brace their legs against the saint for leverage to tighten the ropes. In the lower margin, he is bound and held captive by two figures, all three emerging from flowers. The triumph of good over evil is illustrated on the right by a young man slaying a dragon.