Book of Hours of Maddalena de' Medici (Medici-Rothschild Hours)
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus.
Our renderingHail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women.
What it is
The most sumptuous of the three books of hours Lorenzo de' Medici commissioned for his daughters, given to Maddalena on her marriage to Franceschetto Cybo, son of Pope Innocent VIII, by 1487, and now housed at Waddesdon Manor (Rothschild Collection, National Trust). The manuscript contains twenty-seven miniatures, twelve calendar pages illustrating the labours of the months, and pages decorated with interlaced Medici devices — laurel branches and the diamond ring — alongside Cybo symbols. Attribution of the illuminations has been debated: Annarosa Garzelli proposed Mariano del Buono, while a later study rejects this attribution, and at least seven distinct hands are identifiable in the workshop production. Its documented provenance through the Medici-Cybo marriage makes it one of the most precisely traceable Medici devotional objects.
Why it still matters
The Marian antiphons and Hours of the Virgin within it are still prayed in the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours; the manuscript's imagery can serve as a contemplative visual focus in the tradition of lectio divina.
Kept alongside
Psalter (for the Education of Giovanni de' Medici)
The documented use of the Latin Psalter as the basis of young Giovanni de' Medici's religious instruction by his mother Clarice Orsini is one of the most precisely attested Medici devotional education episodes. When Poliziano attempted to teach the Medici boys using Homer and classical authors, Clarice expelled him from the villa at Cafaggiolo (c. 1479) and substituted the Latin Psalter, insisting on traditional Catholic instruction. Giovanni later became Pope Leo X, giving the episode retrospective significance; it is documented through Poliziano's own letters and subsequent Renaissance scholarship. The underlying text — the Psalter itself — was the universal prayer book of medieval and Renaissance Christendom and carries the highest possible devotional relevance independent of this particular episode.
Book of Hours of Lorenzo de' Medici (MS Ashburnham 1874)
Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis
A tiny parchment codex (10 x 15 cm) signed and dated 1485 by Florentine scribe Antonio Sinibaldi and illuminated by Francesco Rosselli with nine full-page miniatures and a lavish treasure binding set with lapis lazuli and rose quartzes. The 1492 post-mortem inventory of Lorenzo de' Medici lists it among the 'libriccini delli offitii di donna' — small women's office books — confirming it was a Medici household devotional object intended for female use. It was given to Lorenzo's daughter Luisa (1477–1488), who died aged eleven before her intended marriage, so the book never served its probable purpose as a bridal devotional. Its intimate scale, precious materials, and Marian Hours content mark it as an object of private, daily prayer shaped to the rhythm of the canonical hours.
Laudi of Savonarola (including 'Gesù, sommo conforto')
Savonarola composed devotional hymns (laude) at San Marco — the Dominican convent founded and patronized by Cosimo de' Medici in Florence — that were sung by Florentine confraternities under his reform movement. The best-known, 'Gesù sommo conforto,' was preserved in Serafino Razzi's Laudi spirituali (Venice, 1563) and later translated into English by Jane Francesca Wilde as 'Jesus, Refuge of the Weary.' Razzi himself entered San Marco as a novice in 1549, making his anthology a direct institutional transmission of the Savonarolan and Medicean lauda traditions from the same house. These laude circulated alongside Lorenzo de' Medici's laude in the Razzi collection, and their reach extended well beyond Florence through Savonarola's pan-Italian preaching reputation.