It represents the text of a missal for use in Rome and was commissioned by the Breton prelate, who was close to Pope Sixtus IV and Italian humanist circles while living in the papal city.

Many aristocrats and prelates from all over Europe sought to obtain a manuscript decorated by his hand, including Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, Manuel I, King of Portugal, Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, and Lorenzo de' Medici.

He was a native of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier with a doctorate in utroque jure, he pursued an ecclesiastical career in Brittany, holding several religious offices, including the title of archdeacon of Penthièvre.

At that time he belonged to the entourage of Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen, who probably introduced him to artistic circles.

The humanist Giulio Pomponio Leto dedicated a Latin grammar to him in 1483, and he had an episcopal seal[3][4] engraved by Roman artisans.

They are addressed to Taddeo Gaddi (a descendant of the Florentine painter of the same name), who lived in the papal city and was responsible for supervising the production of the work on behalf of the client.

In 1847, it was sold by the parish archpriest to a Parisian bookseller, after having unsuccessfully offered it to Godefroy Brossay-Saint-Marc, Archbishop of Rennes.It was quickly studied by the scholars Charles Cahier and Auguste de Bastard d'Estang.

It was later sold to Cardinal Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald, Archbishop of Lyon and a great art collector.

[9] After the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, the Primatial manuscripts were transferred to the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon.

Only one of these has been located: the Crucifixion, which is currently in the Museum of Modern Art André Malraux in Le Havre, where it was acquired in 1903 as a bequest from the Langevin-Berzan family.

[10] One full-page miniature has been cut out and is now preserved in the Museum of Modern Art André Malraux in Le Havre, following a bequest in 1903 (inv.36.1).

The small central frame containing the text was cut out at an unknown date and remains empty today.

A two-story loggia facing a palace inspired by the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence can be seen in the left background.

His face is barely represented, the painter had adopted an almost profil perdu to avoid drawing the features of a model he probably never met.

It incorporates the influences of Early Netherlandish painting (once known as Flemish Primitives) with its attention to detail in landscapes lightly shrouded in mist and its rendering of materials.

In the same position as on the previous page, but reversed, Thomas James is again depicted in a youthful blue robe, kneeling at the foot of St. John, bareheaded and tonsured.

The city in the background shows several Roman monuments such as the dome of the Pantheon, the walls around St. Peter's Basilica, and the Castel Sant'Angelo.

This last scene is a reproduction of the Baptism of Christ painted by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci.

On the right, it's the Passion,[17] beginning with the Last Supper at the bottom right, then, from bottom to top, the Sorrowful Mysteries: La Prière dans le Jardin des oliviers (The Prayer in the Garden of Olives), the Arrest of Jesus, Jesus before Pilate, the Flagellation, to the Christ Carrying the Cross and the Crucifixion for the main scene.

It depicts L'Assemblée céleste (The Heavenly Assembly) in the upper third of the page: the central group of figures is directly inspired by those present at the Last Judgment (fo 203 ro).

One of them, considered the most skillful by art historians, is the sole author of the decorations for the incipit of the commun of saints (fo 358 ro) and produced the richest frames in the first part of the manuscript.

[19] It has also been hypothesized that the master of Xenophon Hamilton (who had already worked with Attavante on the Bible of Federico da Montefeltro) participated in the decoration of the frontispiece[20] page.