Readily recognizable, this leaf comes from the idiosyncratic, but utterly charming Book of Hours (now believed to have been a Prayerbook) that was perhaps made for John Knyvett of Winwick (c. 1322–1381), possibly in his memory or for a direct descendant. John Knyvett had close ties to the royal crown, having served as Lord Chief Justice, Lord Chancellor, and as one of the executors of the will of King Edward III. In 1931, when offered by the firm Quaritch in London, the manuscript comprised thirty-two miniatures accompanying prayers to the saints, and it was subsequently broken up in New York, probably between 1941, when it belonged to H. P. Kraus, and 1948, when the new owner, the bookseller Rudolf Wien, placed several of the leaves at auction at Sotheby’s. Many, but not all the leaves, have since resurfaced and are found in public and private collections, such as the Morgan Library and Museum (Saint Catherine), the Los Angeles County Museum (Saints Andrew and Martin and a text leaf), the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida (Saints Matthew and James the Greater), and the collection of Robert McCarthy (four leaves). We owe a meticulous reconstruction of the manuscript and its provenance to Peter Kidd in his catalogue of the McCarthy Collection (Kidd 2019).

 

The present miniature illustrates the moment from the life of Saint Margaret of Antioch when she emerges from the dragon that had swallowed her whole. According to Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives compiled between 1259 and 1266, Margaret, meaning pearl, was “shining white in her virginity.” Smitten with her, a pagan prefect wished to take her as his wife, but when brought before him she proclaimed that she was a Christian, which he abhorred. Refusing to give up her faith, Margaret was repeatedly tortured, first brutally on the rack, and then imprisoned. While in prison, there appeared to her “a hideous dragon…who drew her into his maw.” When Margaret made the sign of the cross, she emerged unscathed from the beast. The legend continues with further temptations to her Christianity, until finally, the prefect ordered her beheaded, but she pleaded to say one last prayer that “whenever a woman in labor should call upon her name, the child might be brought forth without harm.” In the miniature we see Margaret, brightly dressed in red, emerging from the body of the frightful beast, its jaws still grasping her garment, the red cross that helped her emerge appearing directly above her praying hands. It is thus that she became patron saint of childbirth and figures prominently in imagery especially for women in the Middle Ages.

 

Other details of the leaf are worth noting. The Latin prayer invoking Margaret’s aid is on the verso of the sheet, so the miniature occupies the recto. Above the miniature, there are three lines of a prayer in Anglo-Norman (the manuscript was written both in Anglo-Norman and in Latin) addressed to Saint Catherine: “La douce virgine Katerine ma priere otrie…” (Sweet Virgin Katherine, accept my prayer…). From this, we can deduce that the preceding leaf was the miniature of Saint Catherine (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M. 1213. Margaret was followed by the prayer and miniature to Saint Helena. The manuscript is replete with heraldry, often with multiple shields on a single page. Here, the heraldry on the recto includes a red shield (type 1, gules), which Peter Kidd has shown is overpainted, and the shield of the Cross of Saint George (type 2, argent a cross, gules) with a small ‘g’ (for George? Or gules?) written in the margin. The Cross of Saint George supports the royal connections of the owner, for King Edward III made Saint George patron saint of England in 1350. Another coat-of-arms on the left margin of the verso is that of the family (type 4, sable a lion passant gardant argent, armed gules and in chief or, four lozenges sable). Not all the miniatures are of the same quality or by the same hand. The present leaf is most like that in the McCarthy Collection of Saint Christopher (BM 2413). The palette, the rendering of the figures, the disposition and composition of the two checkered backgrounds, and the order and arrangement of the shields on both the rectos and versos are remarkably similar in the two leaves. Saints Catherine and Helena appear to be by a different hand.

 

Who was this remarkable artist (or artists)? What workshop produced the manuscript and where? These are questions that have not yet been resolved. Among the English manuscripts with bold tessellated backgrounds that have been put forward as comparisons with the alluring kaleidoscopic backgrounds found on miniatures from the Knyvett Hours, the closest is an alchemical compendium manuscript compiled for King Richard II in 1391 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 581). The date works. But no convincing comparisons for the miniatures have been proposed, although Gabriella Albritton has related them to the full-page pictures of saints in the Alice Hours made in East Anglia (Cambridge, University Library MS Dd.4.17). John Knyvett held estates in both Northamptonshire and East Anglia, so he may have had his manuscript made locally. The foliate initial, the bar border and thin sprays, and the ornamental motifs in the decoration suggest a date in the 1390s, so an intriguing possibility is that the manuscript is made as a memorial to John by his descendants. Peter Kidd has suggested that the large concentration of female saints, especially Mary Magdalene, may point to a female patron. Whatever their origin, miniatures from the Knyvett Hours remain for us as evidence of a highly individualistic style from a period when English Catholic art is unusually scarce due to its massive destruction by Protestants during the English Reformation and thereafter.