Leaf from a Book of Hours with a Family Tree
Unknown Author
Leaf from the Book of Hours of Cardinal Domenico della Rovere, with a Family Tree (fol. 226r)
Italy, about 1480
Black and red ink on vellum
Barber Institute of Fine Arts (No. 69.7)
In the back of the Della Rovere Book of Hours, this leaf is inscribed with the original owner’s family tree. Names of predominantly male family members from some five generations have been carefully written in. This family lineage may also indicate how the book itself was physically passed down through later generations, thereby suggesting the family’s continued devotion to this cherished heirloom.
Domenico della Rovere (1442-1501), who was born near Turin, succeeded his brother, Cristoforo (d. 1478) as Bishop of Tarantaise in 1478. He was created a Cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV in the same year. In 1482, he became Bishop of Turin, and in 1484, after the death of Sixtus IV, he attended the papal conclave that elected Pope Innocent VIII. Domenico was an important patron of art and architecture in Rome, Turin and Piedmont, and would have had the taste, inclination and resources to commission this fine Book of Hours from a leading illuminator (as yet unidentified). Domenico’s name (‘Dominicus’), along with those of his brothers Cristoforo (‘xpofoy’) and Martino (‘Martinus’, b. 1430), can be found in the centre of the tree, with the children and grandchildren of his uncle Giacomo (‘Jacobum’) below. His own birth ‘at 10 at night on Sunday 1 December [1442]’ to his parents Andrea and Giovanni is precisely recorded at the foot of the leaf, in the same elegant hand – assumed to be his own – as the rest of the tree. That such a record of his family should be written in this Book of Hours reflects its nature as a precious object intended and expected to be passed down the generations, very much like a family bible in Victorian times.