Morganmobile: Threes

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In this unusual Trinity, Christ, seated at left, is in his pre-Incarnate state—he has no wounds. Raising his right hand, he places his left on the large book that God the Father nudges toward him. He is promising to fulfill his father’s decision to redeem humankind: he will descend to earth, assume flesh, and be crucified. Encircling the Trinity is a loopy cordelière, an emblem of King François I that references the knotted-rope belt worn by Franciscans. The emblem appears here at the command of the manuscript’s patron, the king’s teenage queen, Claude de France. Having given birth to two daughters, she commissioned this image as a painted prayer, beseeching God to grant François a son—the next king of France—just as He had given his own Son as redeemer to the world.

Trinity, Prayer Book of Claude de France, France, Tours, ca. 1517, illuminated, by the Master of Claude de France, MS M.1166, fol. 24v. Gift of Mrs. Alexandre P. Rosenberg in memory of her husband Alexandre Paul Rosenberg, 2008.