Not until the Renaissance do we see emerge a large number of objects associated with the ritual of childbirth, and specifically, painted portraits of women in the act of labor or confinement. Birthing scenes had not occurred hitherto in either monumental or decorative Western art. Yet during the Renaissance, the image presence of the female-centered birth process was depicted in considerable numbers on maiolica birth wares (Italian lusterware), while secular post-partum confinement scenes was a common subject matter for wooden birthing trays (deschi da parto). Curiously, on the trays and wares, birth and confinement was depicted as a most ideal experience. Yet mother and infant mortality was especially high during this time. While there is only one rare example of the tragic death of a mother and infant described in detail in a marble relief, why was birth portrayed with such optimism and in such great numbers during the Renaissance? (1)
Renaissance culture was greatly influenced by the plague, and placed great emphasis on the family in an effort to regenerate the devastated population. Those who did survive the plague, however, were not free from other dangers, especially women, with regards to childbirth. In fact, with a greater emphasis on procreation, the risks of mother and infant mortality grew, as did their hesitations.
Consider, for example, Catherine of Siena, who was born in 1347 and belonged to the first generation that grew up in the shadows of the Black Death. She was not only a survivor of the plague, but she survived childhood–her twin sister was sent to a wet nurse at birth and died shortly thereafter, while Catherine safely nursed her mother’s milk.(2) Years later, as she was readying herself for marriage, Catherine’s beloved married older sister Buonaventura died in childbirth. These series of tragedies led a guilt- and fear-stricken Catherine to renounce marriage altogether, and to become a Dominican tertiary, choosing a chaste holy life over motherhood. However, not every woman would be able to react to her own foreboding mortality in this way. The Church and state encouraged parents to have large families and childlessness was interpreted as a sign of disfavor with God.(3) Also, any woman who did not marry and remained single was seen in suspicion; those who chose celibacy voluntarily placed her family’s honor in jeopardy.(4)
Thus around this time we see emerge an assortment of material effects that promoted maternal duties, served as keepsakes, and were absorbed into the rituals of Italian Renaissance families. I am interested in how these domestic portraits emerged and became an integral part of the birth ritual. Through an examination of the context that bore these materials, as well as looking at the various examples of childbirth art that emerged during the Italian Renaissance, ranging from those depicted on the wooden birthing trays, the maiolica ware, and the rare example of the relief, I hope to gain a deeper understanding into the uses and function of these idealized portraits and their impact on the birth process.
Reality Verses Ideal
The women of Renaissance Italy bore a special burden when it came to childbirth. One out of every ten births resulted in death for the mother, and with successive annual pregnancies beginning at the onset of fertility; childbirth was the leading cause of death for women during their fertile years.(5) Infants had a slightly higher mortality rate that fluctuated from 25 percent to as much as 50 percent in some areas.(6) It was not uncommon for just two out of six live infants to survive into adulthood. Studies have shown that women wrote their wills before their due dates.(7) Death was already a preoccupation of the European mind after the many outbreaks of the Black Death and years of bad crops and famines, but the difficulties associated with childbirth brought women in unique proximity to death with every rite of passage.(8)
Despite the high mortality rate, there is only one contemporary Western representation of death of mother and infant: the tomb of Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni and her stillborn child, wife of Giovanni Tornabuoni, dating to 1477 in Bargello, Florence from the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (figure 1). Neither obstetrical texts, sacred or secular manuscripts, nor monumental art had touched with such description the nightmarish scene that women and their families most feared. The relief is carved from a single piece of marble but has within it two distinct acts.
On the left-hand side are seven men and three women standing in a loose huddle, surrounding a man in physician’s clothes. An elderly woman presents the lifeless, swaddled infant on a small pillow to the physician who is standing next to Tornabuoni, who appears larger than most of the figures and is depicted in high relief. He is tightly clasping his hands at the sight of his limp child, while others tilt and bow their head to the side, in dismay of the grim sight.
On the right side of the relief, is the birth scene. In more grim detail, eight women surround a bed upon which a weakened woman, Francesca, is barely held upright by attendants. Francesca is also rendered in a larger scale, proportionate to that of her husband, Giovanni. An older woman wearing a veil holds her limp arm, as if checking for a pulse, while another women struggles to support her ever-crouching body. On the floor nearby a wet nurse cradles the swaddled baby, but is not nursing, an indication the child did not survive. Most of the figures are in some stage of grief or disbelief, grasping their heads in shock or crying upwards toward the heavens.
There is only one other monumental work made for a woman who died in childbirth, the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, the wife of the wealthy Lucchese merchant Paolo Guinigi, dating to 1405 in Lucca Cathedral (figure 2).9 Created by sculptor Jacopo della Quercia, this effigy does not show Ilaria in the drama of her death, but rather depicts her laying on her deathbed, draped in a sweeping robe, with clasped hands placed over her stomach, which, although is not uncommon in earlier Gothic tombs, could have been an attempt by the artist to draw attention to her cause of death. The emphasis of the tomb, however, is on her beauty, fidelity and social standing, rather than explicitly childbirth.
Many paintings have been posthumously created that portray a woman who died in pregnancy or childbirth, such as Lorenzo Tornabuoni’s commissioned portrait of his wife of only two years, Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni by Domenico Ghirlandaio in 1488, and Piero della Francesco’s portrait of Battista Sforza, wife of Federico da Montefeltro, who died in childbed with her eighth child at the age of 28, however, these paintings make no obvious reference to their cause of death, as does the relief of Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni (figure 3, figure 4).
It is no wonder there are such few examples depicting the sudden death of woman and child in this way, as it was a particularly painful experience for families to undergo, and likewise image to behold. Following the death of his wife, Giovanni Tornabuoni wrote to his nephew Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici:
My most dearest Lorenzo. I am so oppressed by grief and pain for the most bitter and unforeseen accident of my most sweet wife that I myself do not know where I am. As you will have heard yesterday, as pleased God, at the 22nd hour she passed from this life in childbirth, and the infant, having cut her open, we extracted from the body dead, which to me was a double grief still…(10)
The death of Francesca had a significant impact on her extended family and even caused worry a year later when Clarice Orsini, wife of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici’s, was entering her final term of pregnancy. Given the impact that the stories of women who died in childbirth had on expectant mothers, and the grief it stirred in those directly affected, the more ideal and romantic versions of birth on the wooden trays and maiolica ware were greeted with great appeal and quickly absorbed as a ritual of the birth process.
Emphasis on Family
First appearing in 1348, the Black Death quickly spread across Europe then returned more than a dozen times over the next two centuries, consuming somewhere between one third and one half of Europe’s entire population. In Florence, for example, the population went from a pre-plague high of 120,000 in the late 1330’s to an astonishing 37,000 by 1427.(11) The nearby city of Prato’s population diminished 72 percent within one century starting even before the Black Death going from 3,400 households in 1325 to 950 households by 1410.(12) The devastation of Europe’s demographic had many social consequences, such as labor shortage, and forced migration, but also great psychological concern for and emphasis on family and procreation that would last the next several centuries.
The awareness of the mortality associated with childbirth, and the post-plague psychological perspective of the family gave birth to a rich and varied material culture meant to “encourage, celebrate, and commemorate childbirth.”13 The typical Renaissance birth chamber included fine embroidered bed linens and pillows, painted tables, special clothing for the mother and infant, painted wooden birthing trays and maiolica ware, as well as amulets and other objects associated with magic.(14) All these objects served both practical and symbolic functions to honor the woman and the birthing process, and more importantly, gave the woman a sense of control, protection and mediation, even if it was ultimately a placebo.
Mediating devices were not necessarily exclusive to one’s birth chamber. For example, large monumental paintings such as Domenico Ghirlandaio’s fresco of The Birth of the Virgin, commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni in the Tornabuoni Chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella, depicts a confinement scene in a luxurious bedroom with fine wood inlay and sculpture, that would have been typical for the wealthy merchant class of the time (figure 5). Situated in the contemporary interior with contemporary dress, Saint Anne and her infant, the Virgin Mary are surrounded by several caregivers and visited by a group of female patricians lead by Tornabuoni’s only daughter, Lodovica.(15) The virgin baby rests in the arms of a wet nurse, while another attendant prepares a bath for the child. The mother, resting in bed on her side and propped up on her elbows, is elevated over the guests from a vantage point that sees everyone. By placing the virgin and her mother in a familiar confinement scene, it not only elevates the status of the Tornabuoni family, but it also acts as a sacred endorsement encouraging women to fulfill their own maternal duties.
The imagery being of both familiar and contemporary relevance was key, much like the portrait busts of saints or the depiction of holy scenes, in which even if the authentic likeness to the actual saint was not apparent, through the presentation of familiar contemporary settings and dress, a viewer could more easily be convinced by the image and what it signified.
Deschi da Parto
On a more intimate scale, wooden birthing trays depicting confinement room scenes became a commonplace gift presented to pregnant and post-partum women during the Renaissance.16 They were common for both the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy classes, and were also available at second-hand shops.17 The very first wooden birthing tray appeared around 1370, in the first generation after the Black Death, and continued to be made or purchased second-hand through the middle of the 16th century.18 Double-sided and hand painted with raised frame-like edges, the wooden tray served a utilitarian function for a woman confined in bed, that then after a new mother’s resting phase had concluded, was hung as art in one’s living quarters. Although the images on the fronts of the trays can be mythological and classical narratives, contemporary literary themes, and religious stories, I am focusing on the confinement scenes for the purposes of this essay.
Vasari wrote, in his life of Francesco Salviati, of a drawing used “to paint on one of those round panels on which one carries food to confined women”.(19) Hence its primary function may have been utilitarian, but like the holy confinement scene discussed earlier, the underlying message of its peaceful confinement scene has didactic qualities.
A wooden childbirth tray painted by Masaccio reveals much about the role of the new mother in the confinement room (figure 6).(20) Dating from 1427, the tray is housed at Gemalsdegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz. The confinement room is depicted as an elaborately painted loggia, with green garden-like frescoes painted on the opposite wall and hung with fur pelts, which could also have been illusionistically painted. Five women come to visit the new mother, who is reclining in a bed covered with decadent red sheets and pillows that are probably too fine for every day use.(21) Tucked into bed, and resting on her elbow, the mother turns to talk with her female guests who have come to visit her. Nearly hidden behind a pillar, her head is slightly visible and covered in a gold-beaded cap. The women ostensibly come to see the mother; the child nearby in the foreground is swaddled in a white cloth and held by one of her four simply dressed attendants, whose simple clothing is contrasted by the detail and finery of her guests. Two of her guests are nuns, who are heavily draped in yards of black fabric. The three secular women guests are wearing long flowing gowns, decorated with gold buttons and trim, long cascading sleeves, and have their hair tied up in gold netting; one of which has a gold beaded cap.
On the left of the scene on the outside of the loggia are two trumpeters blowing horns draped with banners that depict a red Florentine lily design. Behind them are two male guests; one is holding and gazing at a birth tray, possibly admiring its painting; the other is holding a round box of sweetmeats, which was a common gift to bring a new mother.(22)
Another typical confinement scene, yet noticeably less luxurious, is a birthing tray from Siena dating to 1520 which portrays a new mother in bed (figure 7). Leaning against the headboard of a four-poster bed with canopy drawn up, she turns slightly and reaches toward an eight-sided tray that sits on a nearby bedside chest. On the tray is a small bowl that she is eating out of, her spoon barely visible. Next to the bowl is a goblet of drink, possibly wine.(23)
The reclining mother is wearing a flowing, crimson robe, adorned with gold embroidered trim. Sunlight is coming in from the left, and bathing the entire room in a warm golden glow, paying special attention to the fabric folds of her robe. Her hair is hidden from view in a gold-embroidered cap. Her eyes gaze back at the viewer, who incidentally, would be someone in her exact condition. One attendant sits nearby facing the mother with her back to us, holding the swaddled infant who looks longingly at her, while another attendant lunges swiftly into the room from a doorway on the right, carrying a bowl to steadfastly serve the new mother. On the far wall hangs a convex mirror and a painting of the Nativity, both things that would be common in confinement settings. On the lower portion of the tray is a coat of arms with a dancing lion; which was probably painted once the tray was purchased as a gift.(24)
Featuring less decadence than the previous confinement scene, these two different approaches have significant consistencies that engage the viewer in its overarching theme, with the conviction to comfort and reassure, as well as to reflect what mothers experienced during previous births and periods of confinement.
As in most confinement portrayals, the child is in the foreground, held by an attendant, while the mother is reclining in her bed, greeting and visiting with her guests, and receiving a variety of gifts, including ephemerals that could include sweetmeats, poultry, wine and even permanent gifts like silverware and birth trays. The new mother is always depicted being served and attended to by several female attendants, while the presence of her husband and men in general is rare. This is a testament to the authenticity of the portrayal of these confinement scenes. Even though the identity of the woman is unknown, the image is painted based on what the post-partum experience was like, and in some cases, what they wanted it to be like.
The emphasis on the ease of recuperation and the convenience of having everything at arms reach is demonstrated in the mother’s peaceful facial expression. The self-referential aspect of including a tray within the tray is not especially unique, as many of the confinement scenes depict such wares, possibly in an effort to promote its own usage and further its legitimacy as a stable part of an unstable event.
Maiolica Wares
Coming into popularity slighter later than the wooden birthing tray, were a variety of maiolica childbirth bowls. At a time when the wooden tray was most popular, the maiolica bowl was recorded in Tuscan inventories around the mid-15th century.(25) The earliest ceramic wares were imported from Spain, and as the demand for lustered ceramics grew, Italian artisans began producing their own wares, and not before long, the term “maiolica” began to designate the Italian made wares. From the beginning of the 1500’s, the popularity of the maiolica birthing wares superseded that of the wooden trays, which coincides with the higher demand in general for the versatility of the glazed ceramics. Not all maiolica wares were birthing wares, but of those that were, they assumed the didactic function of the wooden birth trays.
A childbirth broth bowl and trencher (a flat plate used to cover a bowl) set of maiolica attributed to Nicola da Urbino from Castel Durante dating from 1533-38 reveals two different acts in the narrative of childbirth (figure 8).(26) In the concavity of the trencher is a painting of a pregnant woman in the midst of labor. The actual childbirth labor process was a common motif on maiolica ware. Surrounded by her female attendants, the laboring woman sits in a chair and gazes back at the viewer. One attendant behind her smoothes back her hair and cradles her head; while another, seemingly the midwife, sits on a low chair in front of the pregnant woman’s parted legs prepared to deliver the infant. The expectant mother’s arm reaches outward and grasps the white cloth that wraps the midwife’s hair, an expression of pain, but management. A third attendant bends over behind the woman on the left, and pours water into a large bowl. At a nearby window that appears to open to a balcony, an astrologer stands facing the night sky, casting the chart of the imminent child.(27) Behind the women is the popular canopy bed in an intimate birthing chamber. The laboring woman’s facial expression is particularly docile and pleasant, a stark contrast from what we would expect to encounter in such a scene. The female-centered focus of the painting illustrates how not just confinement, but labor also is a social event that many people share in. Many people, mostly women, get together to care for one female and help her through her labor in a warm and inviting environment.
In the adjoining broth bowl is another image; this time appearing to happen chronologically after the birth. The painting features the healthy infant, one assistant, and the same mother (figure 9). In what appears to be the same room, the mother is now up, standing with her back toward the child, perhaps captured mid-walk, and happily getting on with her duties. A simple dressed assistant, perhaps wet nurse, sits on the floor with the infant, who is nude and healthy looking, reclining on her legs.
The split-scene depiction of labor, followed by a post-partum image is an interesting example of how a series of paintings can string together a narrative more explicitly fulfilling the didactic function. These wares more explicitly tell a story of successful birth, and thereby encourage a positive perception for an unsure woman about to undergo labor. Also, this set of maiolica ware was most likely part of a larger childbirth ware set, with other scenes that we may not know about. The paintings depicted on maiolica ware could contain a wider variety of intimate imagery, as they would often only be visible to those with direct physical contact, most likely the laboring woman or new mother in confinement.
With the use of the wooden birth trays already in wane, maiolica wares remained in use until the early seventeenth century. It was at that time that the population of Europe had begun to succeed the numbers of its pre-plague population, and perhaps the pressure of successive birth of earlier times had subsided. Also in the seventeenth century, the Milan patricate initiated a control to limit families, which decreased child mortality, and reduced the fertility of mothers.(28)
In a strange relationship, without the high mortality rates from both the Black Death and childbirth-related causes, the Italian Renaissance wouldn’t have spawned such a great wealth of birth materials, and specifically, the portraits of women in labor or in confinement on wooden birth trays or maiolica ware. In an era of uncertainty, these intimate-scaled portraits of pregnant or post-partum women were an attempt to make birth manageable, through portraying it manageable. What soon became a commonplace tradition, birth trays or maiolica sets were purchased for new mothers to celebrate and commemorate the birth of their child, and as an acknowledgement to her fulfillment of her maternal role. These objects were designed with a utilitarian function, but also an emotional and psychological function: by locating the figure in a familiar birth chamber with all the familiar accoutrements, the painting on the tray or bowl could not only provide a sense of ease about a future birth by demonstrating the relaxed expression of a mother in bed, but also assist in recollecting a woman’s previous successful births, and incorporating many elements she might have encountered in her confinement. The tray or bowl then was kept as a keepsake or reminder of one’s successful birth, and hung in encouragement in one’s room.
With the variety of mediation objects available, women were given a sense of control. Even if was the control was illusory; the idealized portraits themselves attempted to close the great gap between the paintings of childbirth and the stark realities of childbirth in Renaissance Italy. Behaving on multiple levels, the portraits on the trays and wares, designed for the female viewer, documented aspects of birth in Renaissance Italy, idealized the birth process for women, and functioned as a sort of advertisement for and promotion of a woman’s maternal role. With the addition of the family’s coat of arms, the tray became that much more personal and specific. The paintings, in their attempt to transform the state of mind of the women, strove to alleviate the hesitations and fears about the birth process by using a personal pictorial language to persuade its viewer into comfort and compliance. And then, when the use for such images was no longer necessitated by the culture from which they rose, the ritual of gifting wooden childbirth trays and maiolica ware ceased practice.
Notes
1 Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth In Renaissance Italy, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1999, p. 116.
2 Daniel Bornstein. “Spiritual Kinship and Domestic Devotions”, Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, edited by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis. London and New York, Longman, 1998, P. 175.
3 John T. Paoletti, Gary M. Radke, Art in Renaissance Italy, United Kingdom, Lawrence King Publishing, 2005, p. 219.
4 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1985.p. 119.
5 Margaret L. King, The Renaissance in Europe, United Kingdom, Lawrence King Publishing, 2003, p. 162.
6 King, pp. 158-159.
7 Musacchio, p. 25. In Stanley Chojnacki’s study of Venetian testaments, he found evidence of pregnant women writing their wills before their due dates.
8 Paoletti, Radke, p. 56.
9 Musacchio, pp. 29-31.
10 Musacchio. P. 29.
11 Musacchio, p. 32.
12 Klapisch-Zuber, p. 26.
13 Musacchio, p. 15.
14 Musacchio, p. 125. Other mediations included herbal remedies, religious worship, prayers, relics, and votive offerings.
15 Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, p. 210.
16 Musacchio, pp. 59-73. Wooden birthing trays were also given to couples as wedding gifts, and also retained in the home for a long period of time, and passed on through generations. At the time of his death, Lorenzo de’ Medici had his birth tray still hanging in his room.
17 Musacchio, p. 68. In 1471, Nicolo Strozzi bought a birth tray from a second-hand dealer a month before his wife was due.
18 Musacchio, p. 59.
19 Musacchio, p. 59.
20 Musacchio, pp. 35-36.
21 Musacchio, pp. 35-36. Women had special objects to use on the occasion of birth and would keep them for extended periods to be reused in future births.
22 Masucchio, pp. 41-42. Sweetmeats were such a common gift that even charitable organizations assisted in gifting boxes of sweetmeats to new mothers whose husbands could not otherwise afford them.
23 Masucchio, p. 42, 60. Wine was a common gift for women during and after pregnancy, to drink in confinement and with guests.
24 Musacchio, p. 71. Birth trays were most likely stock items that workshops had pre-painted, and once it was purchased would add the distinctive, identifying characteristic of a coat of arms.
25 Musaccio, p. 92.
26 Masucchio, p. 116. For more information and better images, I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum online.
27 Musacchio, p. 116. Astrology was an important part of Renaissance society. Household inventories revealed that many homes had astrology books.
