Martyrdom of St Thomas 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 Thomas the Apostle opens with the illuminated initial ‘O’ (O Thoma didime per christum quem meruisti tangere) 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 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 Thomas. In the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, the saint was put to death in India by four soldiers with spears. While the composition only allows for the inclusion of two soldiers, a third figure stabs the saint in the lower margin. The distinctive trifoliate leaves of the strawberry beside him are a symbol of the Trinity, the red of the berry a sign of martyrdom. In both the main painting and the lower margin, the saint serenely prays to God above. The text of the antiphon, ‘we pray with lofty [voices]’ (te deprecamur altissonis) resonates with Thomas’s posture, bending backward to face the heavens.