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. Margaret and the Dragon (fol. 20v, left)
Margaret had caught the eye
of the Roman prefect Olybrius,
who wanted her as his wife or
mistress. Rejecting him, Mar-
garet was thrown into a prison
where a devil, in the form of a
dragon, swallowed her. The
saint was miraculously delivered from the bloody belly of
the monster.
St. Margaret, like Catherine
and Ursula, belongs to a large
group of early Christian martyrs
that was popular in the late
Middle Ages. The pride of
place that these three women
receive among the Suffrages in
her prayer book is a reflection
of the piety and patronage of
Anne de Bretagne. Margaret,
for example, was patron of safe
childbirth, always a concern of
the mother of a potential king.
