Prayer O intemerata and scenes from the Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ
Texts and Images
A common prayer to Mary as an intercessor for humanity, O intemerata (‘O immaculate Virgin’) opens with a large miniature of the Virgin and Child. Every page has a marginal miniature from the cycle illustrating the French poem Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ.
Virgin and Child (prayer O intemerata)
This composition, with a figure seated on a bench and books displayed on the desk, replicates the design of the image of St John painted by the Rohan Master (fol. 13r). The Rohan Master sketched this image too, as his idiosyncratic underdrawing reveals. But he left the painting to an assistant who was trained by the Giac Master and replicated his tiled floors and his bland, plump, beady-eyed faces. The assistant had not yet mastered the preparation and application of his pigments, as their poor condition indicates. Aesthetically and technically inferior as this miniature may be, it is an important link between the Rohan and Giac Masters, as it shows them sharing an assistant.
The marginal scene of the Flagellation illustrates the Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ cycle. The arms of Isabella Stuart have been added to the border.