During the first half of the sixteenth century, two young girls named Agnoletta and Maria dell'Ospedale, both born to enslaved mothers, were brought to the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence. Since its foundation almost a century earlier, and through the charity of the Florentine silk guild as well as other civic organisations, the Innocenti accepted and baptized all children left at its doorstep, with the express aim of assuring their status as free Catholics. Like Agnoletta and Maria, approximately one third of the children brought to the Innocenti were born to enslaved women living in households throughout the city. Most of these abandoned children were girls, who were often considered superfluous, as they could not continue the patriline. Many of the aforementioned enslaved women, hailing from the Ottoman Empire and West Africa and brought to Florence via the Mediterranean slave trade, were also rented out to the Innocenti and to other foundling homes to labour as wetnurses and to generate profits for their enslavers. Based on an analysis of archival documents, this paper elucidates the exploitation of enslaved mothers as well as the treatment of foundlings at the Innocenti. Building on the cases of Agnoletta and her mother Lisa, who was forced to abandon her in 1538; Maria dell'Ospedale, who was later enslaved in the court of Cosimo I de' Medici (r. 1537-1569); and several other cases recorded in the Innocenti's intake registers, this paper explores the social, religious, and racial dynamics of their exploitation. It sheds new light on the environment of a charitable institution that exploited the labour of enslaved women and was populated by their abandoned offspring.