The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (review)

Charles Dempsey

Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 75, Number 1, Spring 2001,pp. 127-128 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/bhm.2001.0008

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book reviews Bull. Hist. Med., 2001, 75 127

Jacqueline Marie Musacchio. The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy.New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. xiv + 212 pp. Ill. $50.00.

A great deal of recent art-historical research into the art of the Italian Renais-sance has been heavily influenced by the work of social and economic historians,and considers works of art under the rubric of material culture, using them asdocuments that preserve information about the myriad forms of societal appear-ances, transactions, behavior, and ritual. Musacchio’s book is a good example.Her first chapter, entitled “The Social, Physical, and Demographic Context forRenaissance Childbirth,” is succeeded by one devoted to an exceptionally welldocumented test case (“Caterina di Ser Girolamo da Colle and the MaterialCulture of Renaissance Childbirth”).

Despite the book’s title, it is concerned especially with Tuscany—in particular,Florence and Siena, for which the visual evidence is very rich. The many depic-tions of the birth of John the Baptist, patron of Florence, are especially impor-tant, as well as those of the birth of the Virgin, patroness of Siena. These showscenes of lying-in in loving detail: the infant being washed by nursemaids whocarefully test the water for warmth, rolls of swaddling at the ready; the motherwashing her hands and being greeted by female relatives and friends, who bringher food and drink on painted or intarsiated birth trays, called deschi da parto.Many of these trays survive—among them, one painted by none other thanMasaccio, and many by his brother, called Lo Scheggia, including one in theMetropolitan Museum of Art painted for the birth of Lorenzo the Magnificent,which shows the Triumph of Fame. To these trays Musacchio devotes her thirdchapter, which ends with a birth bowl for serving fruit, or tafferia da parto, paintedby Pontormo around 1525. However, by this date the earlier taste for paintedbirth services had largely ceded to maiolica ceramic ware, the subject of theabsorbing fourth chapter. These often appear as single pieces, but they alsoappear in ingeniously constructed assemblages, all richly historiated, made up ofas many as five or six interlocked plates and bowls.

The book ends with a chapter entitled “Maternal Mediators,” which entersinto the domain of the anthropological. It is devoted not so much to sacredimages on birth services as to profane depictions of various types. One of themore common (and amusing) motifs shows infant boys in various activities, oftenrude: sometimes they urinate, and sometimes they appear in mock combat,groping at each other’s genitals. Musacchio plausibly reads such images as a kind

128 book reviews Bull. Hist. Med., 2001, 75

of apotropaic device, expressing hopes for a male child, and for his health,wealth, beauty, and fecundity. An astounding example—again in the Metropoli-tan Museum of Art, and still not well understood—appears on a birth traypainted in 1428 by Bartolomeo di Fruosino. It shows an infant boy seated on arocky island, upon which he urinates in two streams, and carries a damagedinscription around its border, which I give in English translation: “May God granthealth to every woman who gives birth and to the fathers . . . and may the birth bewithout fatigue or peril. I am a baby [bambolino] who lives on an island. I makepee-pee of silver and gold.”

Musacchio’s book originated as a doctoral dissertation, and it contains a fewlapses of judgment and slippages that are hardly surprising given the highlyinterdisciplinary nature of its subject. It is thorough in its research, is prefaced byan indispensable glossary of Italian terms, and ends with four documentaryappendices. Musacchio has a sharp eye for detail and inexhaustible zeal, and noreader will come away from her book uninstructed.

Charles DempseyJohns Hopkins University