Hours / Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis of Anna Sforza and Cardinal Ippolito d'Este
Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis (Hours of Anna Sforza / Cardinal Ippolito d'Este)
A verified public-domain excerpt for this text is still being set. The folio is catalogued and linked below; an original Sub Rosa rendering will follow.
What it is
Produced in Milan around 1491–1500 by the Sforza court illuminator Francesco Binasco, this luxury Book of Hours links the Sforza and Este dynasties through the marriage of Anna Sforza to Alfonso I d'Este in January 1491. Scholarly debate continues over whether it was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este — whose cardinal's hat appears in the manuscript — or prepared as a wedding gift for Anna Sforza; the cardinal's hat strongly suggests Ippolito as the primary patron. It contains a Roman-rite calendar, privately ordered prayers of devotion, twelve full-page miniatures of the Virgin and female saints, and 146 historiated initials. Now preserved at the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria in Modena (MS Lat. 74 / alfa Q.9.31), it is a rare documented case of a Book of Hours that bridges the devotional cultures of two of northern Italy's most powerful courts.
Why it still matters
The Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis at its core is still the backbone of traditional Catholic daily prayer; the Marian antiphons and hours it contains can be prayed verbatim from any modern edition of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Kept alongside
Gualenghi-d'Este Hours
Created around 1469 for the marriage of Ferrarese diplomat Andrea Gualengo to Orsina d'Este, a niece of the ruling marquis, this book of hours is among the most important Italian manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Ms. Ludwig IX 13). Painted chiefly by Taddeo Crivelli with contributions from Guglielmo Giraldi, both leading court illuminators of Ferrara, it contains the Hours of the Virgin, Penitential Psalms, Hours of the Holy Cross, Office of the Dead, and suffrages — short votive prayers to individual saints. The full-page miniatures blend Ferrarese Renaissance naturalism with classical architectural framing, making this one of the finest secular-devotional commissions of the Quattrocento. Its creation at the intersection of diplomacy and dynastic alliance gives it an unusual social depth for a personal prayer book.
Llangattock Breviary (Breviary of Leonello d'Este)
Breviarium ad usum Ferrariensem (Breviary of Leonello d'Este)
Commissioned by Leonello d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara (r. 1441–1450), for his private chapel, this sumptuous breviary contains the Calendar, Temporale, Psalter, Sanctorale, Common of Saints, and Auxiliary Texts, written in Gothic textualis rotunda on parchment. Illuminated by four leading Ferrarese artists, it served as the principal liturgical book of the Este chapel under Leonello and represents the fullest flowering of the first generation of Ferrarese court illumination. Broken up and sold as individual leaves at Christie's in December 1958, its folios are now tracked by the Broken Books digital project and survive in Harvard, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Museo Schifanoia in Ferrara, and other collections. Its dispersal makes it one of the most prominent cautionary cases in the history of manuscript disbound for the art market.
Hours of Gian Galeazzo Visconti (Visconti Hours)
Officiolum Vicecomitis (Hours of Gian Galeazzo Visconti)
Begun in the late 1380s–1390s for Gian Galeazzo Visconti, first Duke of Milan, and completed under his son Filippo Maria Visconti around 1430, this two-volume masterpiece of Italian illumination contains the Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Penitential Psalms with litanies, Office of the Dead, and suffrages to saints, all following Roman liturgy. Giovannino dei Grassi's exquisite naturalistic marginalia and Belbello da Pavia's intense Gothic figural work across two generations make it the most ambitious manuscript project of the Visconti court and a foundational document of north Italian Renaissance art. The Sforza dynasty inherited the Visconti duchy through the marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza (1441), and with it inherited the devotional culture this manuscript represented, though direct Sforza use of this specific codex is not positively documented. The manuscript is now at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence (Banco Rari 397 and Landau-Finaly 22).