Martyrdom of St Apollonia 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 Apollonia opens with the illuminated initial ‘B’ (Beata appolonia grave martirium pro domino substimut) 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 Apollonia. One of the early Christian virgin martyrs, Apollonia was tortured for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. She is bound in a chair and held by one Roman soldier while another uses pincers or pliers to pull out her teeth. As a result of her torture, she was invoked against toothache. The action is here directed by a man on holding a wand, a common attribute of pagans employed both as a sign of authority and a belief in false gods. Two soldiers appear in the lower margin looking up at the scene. One holds a sword, the other pincers and a hammer. Some accounts of her death record that her teeth were both smashed and pulled from her head.