Cosimo's father, Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, arranged the marriage in order to assuage Spain's (where Maria Magdalena's sister was the incumbent queen) animosity towards Tuscany, which had been inflamed due to a string of Franco-Tuscan marriages.

Maria Maddalena and her mother-in-law, Christina of Lorraine, acted as regents until the boy came of age.

Together, they aligned Tuscany with the Papacy; re-doubled the Tuscan clergy; and allowed the trial of Galileo Galilei to occur.

In 1626, they banned any Tuscan subject from being educated outside the grand duchy, a law later resurrected by Maria Maddalena's grandson, Cosimo III.

[4] The Grand Duchess died aged 42 after a visit to her brother Leopold in Innsbruck on the way back to Passau.