ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a manuscript Book of Hours commissioned in Florence for Eleanor of Toledo in 1541 with ornament that had a didactic rather than a devotional message. It exemplifies the changing use of one category of prayerbook by showing that its role as a manual of dynastic history, as seen through emblems and imprese, was at least as important as its religious function. The text pages are the best-preserved parts of Eleanor's Hours. The ornament in Eleanor's Book of Hours thus had an immediate topicality. Apart from its devotional role, the prayerbook provided an instruction manual for a newcomer to the Medici family in the political iconography of her new environment. The key to the decorative program in Eleanor's Hours lies in a series of imprese or emblems that appear at either the top or the bottom of each page in the illuminated openings.
