Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

MS M.50, Fol. 10v

Jean Poyer

Anne de Bretagne at Confession

ca. 1492–95

Prayer Book of Anne de Bretagne
Illuminated by Jean Poyer

126 x 80 mm
MS M.50 (fol. 10v)

The Pierpont Morgan Library, Purchased in 1905

Anne de Bretagne at Confession (fol. 10v, left)

Anne is shown at confession, kneeling, not in a wooden enclosure but beside her confessor, who leans toward her to hear her whispered sins. The miniature illustrates the Act of Confession.

Private devotional books were often personalized with portraits of the individual who commissioned them. The fact that Anne is shown as a sinner indicates that she personally commissioned this book, for no one would have dared to give the queen a book that represented her in this way.

Poyer paints Anne wearing the Breton cap, which signified her ties to her homeland of Brittany, and dress in maroon, a favorite color of the queen.