Martyrdom of St Sebastian 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). The folio was removed from the bound volume between 1933 and 1960. Beneath rubrics in blue, a prayer to St Sebastian opens with the illuminated initial ‘O’ (O Sancte sebastiane semper vesper et mane) 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 Sebastian. According to the Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives, Sebastian was a secret Christian in Diocletian’s Praetorian Guard. When discovered, the emperor ordered him stripped of his tunic, tied to a column and shot until ‘as full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks’. This example includes three archers, two in the main painting and a third in the lower margin. While left for dead, Sebastian was not killed but nursed back to health by St Irene. When he later confronted the emperor, he was beaten to death and his body thrown in Cloaca Maxima (Roman sewer).