St Catherine of Alexandria 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 Catherine opens with the illuminated initial ‘V’ (Virgo sancta katherina grecie gemma urbe alexandrina) 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 Martyrdom of St Catherine of Alexandria. According to various hagiographies, and noted in the antiphon below, she was the daughter of King Costa. The crown denotes her royal blood. Following her conversion to Christianity, she was subject to the unwanted attentions of the emperor Maxentius (r. 306–312). For refusing his advances, the emperor had Catherine imprisoned and gathered 50 pagan philosophers to debate against her. Not only did she refuted each argument, she convinced several to convert, all of whom were executed. Maxentius then sentenced Catherine to die on the spiked wheel, a particularly vicious torture. She was miraculously saved when an angel broke the device but was then beheaded. In the painting she kneels in prayer, her head bend to receive the executioner’s axe. The emperor watches with a group of courtiers from the background. Two fellow Christians lay dead beneath the wheel. Catherine was especially extolled for her scholarly acumen and in the lower margin she is pictured debating a group of philosophers. A little bird is added to the upper margin on the verso.