ABSTRACT
Donor portraits bridge time and space: the donor as a painted figure speaks to the living Virgin, and the donor as a living being is present before the painted image of the Madonna. Vigils of the Dead, the seven Penitential Psalms, and the two long Marian prayers 'O intemerata et in aeternum benedicta' and 'Obsecro te sancta virgo Maria', others were variable, especially the suffrages to saints and prayers to God the Father, Christ, and Mary. For many pilgrims, viewing the image may have meant no more than being able to tick off one more relic on their list of things to see in Rome. Josquin's motet to the Virgin, with its attached prayer, may have served as a model for a poetic prayer to the Virgin by Jean Molinet, based on the five feasts as in Josquin's text. O Domine is the earliest musical setting of the cycle of prayers.
