Vision of St Eustace 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 red, a prayer to St Eustace opens with the illuminated initial ‘V’ (Vir domini Eustachius dixit imperatori) painted with white, red, blue and gold ivy-leaf ornament. 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 Vision of St Eustace. This miraculous story is recorded in the Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives. A soldier in Trajan’s army named Placidus was part of a hunting party but quitted his group in pursuit of a particularly large stag. When the animal stopped, he saw a vision of a crucifix between the stag’s antlers. Here, the saint kneels on the ground beside his horse, accompanied by his hunting dogs. The countryside setting is marked by a windmill overlooking a river. Following this vision, he converted to Christianity and was baptised Eustace. The lower margin features more of the hunting party chasing after a deer, partly hidden by a clump of trees.