Martyrdom of St Laurence 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. A prayer to St Laurence opens with the illuminated initial ‘B’ (Beatus laurencuis bonus opus operates est) 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 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 Laurence. According to the Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives, before Pope Sixtus II was arrested, he instructed Laurence to give the church’s treasures to the poor. When the Roman provost discovered this, he ordered Laurence stretched upon a gridiron. While the Roman authorities on horseback watch from the upper left, his executioners hold him down with a pitchfork and stoke the fire with a bellows. He is alleged to have said his torturers, ‘this side is done, turn me over.’ Two additional figures in the margins bring the gridiron and fork to the execution.