St Vincent 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 Vincent opens with the illuminated initial ‘E’ (Egreguis dei martir vincencius dixis tormentorum) 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 St Vincent of Saragossa. He wears religious vestments, reads from a book and holds the palm of a martyr. He was bishop of Saragossa and martyred during the Diocletian persecutions. According to the Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives, Vincent was stretched on the rack, among various other tortures. In the lower margin, the saint’s arms and legs are tied to rollers at either end of the wooden frame. The torturers slowly turn the wheels, increasing the strain on his joints causing dislocation, separation and worse.