Martyrdom of St Bartholomew 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 St Bartholomew opens with the illuminated initial ‘B’ (Beatus bartholomeus dixit ad regem) 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 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 Martyrdom of St Bartholomew. While various accounts of his death are recorded in the Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographies (saints’ lives), the most popular and persistent was that Bartholomew was flayed alive in Armenia. He is held down by two men as a third uses a knife to peel back the skin from his leg. The figure in the centre holds a wand, a common attribute of pagans employed both as a sign of authority and a belief in false gods. Two additional executioners appear in the lower margin. The saint is sometimes shown holding his own flayed skin (seen elsewhere in this manuscript). Due to the nature of his alleged martyrdom he is often considered the patron saint of people who work with skin, such as bookbinders, butchers, shoemakers, tanners and dermatologists. He is also the patron saint of the Armenian Church, together with St Jude.