In Vallo della Lucania, an image of the Madonna della Grazie (‘Madonna of Graces’) is carried through the streets on procession, her right breast on view to the public. She holds the baby Jesus but is not actively breastfeeding, indicating that her breast is being offered to devotees, not to her child. Images of the 16th c. statue are also printed and displayed on a massive scale. The great visibility of the breast invites the public into the scene, not just as spectators but as active participants and recipients of the Virgin’s grace.
“It is very important that an infant should be nourished by the same mother in whose womb and by whose blood he was conceived”.
Francesco Barbaro , translated by Margaret King
Renaissance Realities of Breastfeeding
Infant and child mortality rates during the Renaissance created a high emotional risk for mothers who became too attached to their children in their infancy, and breastfeeding could prevent the conception of another child. So, infants and toddlers of elite families in the Renaissance were not typically raised or breastfed by their biological mothers but by wet nurses, leaving the mothers longing for the intimate, lovely imagery seen in images of the Madonna and Child.
It was believed that the blood of the womb was filtered through a woman’s body postpartum to create breast milk and that it was possible to pass morality and good behaviour through breastfeeding, so wet nurses for noble houses were chosen based on their perceived virtue. Preachers and humanists also advised women to breastfeed their own children rather than trusting this essential task to a stranger. This understanding of breastfeeding also applies to Jesus Christ. It was believed that Christ was formed entirely from the body of the Virgin Mary and that she breastfed him as an infant, and so her goodness and purity were passed to the infant Christ through her breast milk. In art, this was also shown in the shape of the breast. Higher, rounded breasts were a symbol of virtue, and lower, older breasts were a symbol of impurity.
The Breast in Renaissance Art
Renaissance Humanism provoked an increased interest in human anatomy and the body’s function. Artists created images of women drawn from Classical sources, a popular genre in the Renaissance, and used breasts as symbols of fertility and female sexuality, but they were still ideal versions and not anatomically accurate. Allegorical images of Charity often showed her with one or both breasts exposed in the act of breastfeeding multiple children as an act of mercy.
Alternatively, Eve was often shown with her breasts exposed in the Garden of Eden at the Fall of Man as a symbol of shame. Eve and the Virgin Mary could be placed in one painting in direct opposition: the limited nakedness of the Madonna serves a vital divine function, and Eve’s complete nakedness represents her sin and the condemnation of every woman to come after her. Eve’s fallen flesh is only redeemed by Mary’s purity.
Sight of Salvation
Despite the sexual connotations of bare breasts in the Renaissance and today, many of these bare-breasted Madonnas are still proudly displayed in churches and paraded in public, the image of their breasts reproduced and amplified on banners and signs. The exposed breast of the Madonna serves as a reminder of the possibility of Salvation through Christ. The higher breasts on many of these statues serve to represent an ideal female form but are intentionally unrealistic to make clear their separation from the sinful breast. Statues of the Madonna della Grazie also often show her stepping forward, displaying her breast or breasts to the viewer. This implies that the ‘grace’ she offers comes in the form of her exposed, lactating breast as a symbol of salvation, spiritual nourishment, and hope.
Abigail Gordon and Rebekah Nearing
Selected Bibliography: Michele Savonarola, A Mother’s Manual for the Women of Ferrara : A Fifteenth-Century Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics, ed. Gabriella Zuccolin, trans. Martin Marafioti, 1 online resource (xi, 254 pages) : illustrations. vols. (New York: Iter Press New York, 2022); Jutta Sperling, “Milk and Miracles: Heteroglossia and Dissent in Venetian Religious Art after the Council of Trent,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 51, no. 2 (May 1, 2021): 285–319; Jutta Sperling, “Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk: The Lactation of Saint Bernard and the Flemish Madonna Lactans (ca. 1430–1530),” Renaissance Quarterly 71, no. 3 (2018): 868–918; Jutta Sperling, Medieval and Renaissance Lactations: Images, Rhetorics, Practices (London: Taylor and Francis, 2016); Deborah L. Krohn, “Birth and Family in the Italian Renaissance | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History,” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 2008; Margaret R. Miles, A Complex Delight: The Secularization of the Breast, 1350-1750 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Mary Rogers and Paola Tinagli, Women in Italy: 1350-1650 Ideals and Realities a Sourcebook (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005); Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice : Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven [Conn: Yale University Press, 2004); Merrall Llewelyn Price, “Bitter Milk: The ‘Vasa Menstrualis’ and the Cannibal(Ized) Virgin,” College Literature 28, no. 1 (2001): 144–54; Beth Williamson, “THE VIRGIN LACTANS AS SECOND EVE: IMAGE OF THE ‘SALVATRIX,’” Studies in Iconography 19 (1998): 105–38; Deborah L. Krohn, “Birth and Family in the Italian Renaissance | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History,” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 2008; Victor Lasareff, “Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin,” The Art Bulletin 20, no. 1 (1938): 26–65;
Performing Devotion: The Ritual Uses of Sculpture from the Italian Renaissance to Today 