Hours of Isabella d'Este
Domine labia mea aperies: et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.
Our renderingO Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
What it is
An exquisite Florentine Book of Hours made for Isabella d'Este (1474–1539), daughter of Ercole I d'Este, upon her marriage to Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua in 1490. The four full-page miniatures and countless decorated initials were executed by the Florentine brothers Gherardo and Monte di Giovanni del Fora; the Annunciation miniature consciously echoes a painting by Leonardo and Verrocchio now in the Uffizi. The arms of both the Este and Gonzaga families appear on an illuminated double page at the Hours of the Virgin, confirming the manuscript's personal provenance for Isabella at the Gonzaga court. Isabella was among the most cultivated women of the Renaissance and used her private chapel and library for sustained devotional practice.
Why it still matters
The opening versicle of Matins from the Little Office of the Virgin — the core text of this hours — can still be prayed daily as an invitation to morning prayer; the traditional form remains in many liturgical prayer books.
Kept alongside
Thomas à Kempis: De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ)
Perhaps the most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible, the Imitation of Christ counsels interior piety, Eucharistic devotion, and detachment from worldly ambition — values promoted at both the Wittelsbach Counter-Reformation court and in Erasmian Lutheran circles in Saxony. The Jesuits recommended it throughout their German mission work, making it a standard text in the Bavarian court milieu under Albert V and William V; Luther himself was formed in the Devotio Moderna tradition from which it springs. No single Wettin or Wittelsbach ownership record has been located, and the dual-house listing reflects the near-universal presence of the text in every German Catholic and Erasmian Protestant court of the period rather than documented patronage.
Book of Hours of Eleonora Ippolita Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino (Bodleian MS Douce 29)
A Book of Hours for the Use of Rome made for Eleonora Ippolita Gonzaga (1493–1550), eldest daughter of Isabella d'Este and Francesco II Gonzaga, who married Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (nephew of Pope Julius II and ward of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro). The manuscript, written in the elegant script of the celebrated calligrapher Ludovico degli Arrighi, links the Gonzaga and the della Rovere–Montefeltro lines and represents private ducal devotion at Urbino in the generation after Castiglione's court. Now in the Bodleian Library as MS Douce 29, it demonstrates the continuing tradition of aristocratic women commissioning personal books of hours for private prayer.
Missal of Barbara of Brandenburg (Messale di Barbara di Brandeburgo)
A magnificently illuminated missal — the mass-book for the Eucharist — commissioned by Gianlucido Gonzaga in 1442 and continued after his death in 1448 under the personal direction of Barbara of Brandenburg, consort of Marquis Ludovico III Gonzaga. Barbara herself hired Girolamo da Cremona at the recommendation of Andrea Mantegna to complete the sixty-eight miniatures, writing that he was 'a young man who illuminates very well.' The manuscript introduces the nine principal feasts with half-page miniatures and contains over two thousand decorated initials. Originally intended for the cathedral of San Pietro at Mantua, it was finally donated to the church in 1554 by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and remains in the Mantua Cathedral to this day.