This prayer book was commissioned by Anne de Bretagne, wife of two successive kings of France, Charles VIII and Louis XII, to teach her son, the dauphin Charles-Orland (1492–1495), his catechism. It was painted in Tours by Jean Poyer, an artist documented as working for the queen. The book is richly illustrated, and its thirty-four airy, light-flooded miniatures are among the most delicate examples of late-fifteenth-century art.
Martyrdom of St. Ursula and Her Companions (fol. 17v, left)
Eleven ships sail the Rhine
River as the flotilla of Ursula
and her eleven thousand
companions arrive at Cologne,
Germany. Ursula's refusal to
marry the Huns' leader caused
him to slaughter the whole
group.
Poyer shows the decapitation
of three maidens in the
foreground; the martyrdom of
the rest of Ursula's eleven
thousand companions is
suggested by further carnage
in the background. Ursula was
a particular favorite saint of
Anne de Bretagne's because,
according to tradition, she was
one of the earliest queens of
Brittany, Anne's homeland.
