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.
St. Anthony of Padua and the Miracle of the Mule (fol. 25v, left)
A mule ignores a basket of feed
and piously genuflects and
receives communion from St.
Anthony (the "Miracle Worker
of Padua"), a miracle that
converted nonbelievers to
accept the presence of Christ
in the Eucharist.
Anthony wears the robe of the
Franciscan order, tied at the
waist with the rope that reappears throughout the manuscript's decorative borders—the
cordelière—a personal device of
Anne de Bretagne. Anthony
was canonized less than a year
after his death in 1231; his
basilica in Padua remains a
popular pilgrimage site to
this day.
