Madonna and Child (Madonna del Latte)

Abstract

This relief is made of painted papier-mâché on wood. Many such half-length images of the Madonna and Child were made out of relatively cheap materials for domestic devotion. Handbooks from the period inform us that children were told to model their behaviour on that of the baby Jesus, and that women who looked at such an image were more likely to conceive a healthy baby boy. This image, of the Madonna nursing her baby, could have a polemical point in an age in which most women who could afford art sent their children away from home to be nursed by a wet nurse. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.