More than maternity

Principle among art-history instances of breastfeeding are paintings, sculptures, tapestries and stained-glass art in churches that relay key Biblical moments of the Virgin Mary nursing the baby Jesus. Should you find yourself in the corridors of the Louvre, in the same halls where kings and princes are eternalised, one singular image of breastfeeding will make its way towards you time and time again: that of the Virgin Mary nursing the baby Jesus, which emerged in the twelfth century and proliferated in full bloom from the fourteenth as her cult of worship grew. In art, the nursing Virgin is called the Madonna Lactans, and she is a sanctity. Most of all, as the Church’s model of maternity, she is silent. The son of God as a human baby on Earth has presented something of a conundrum for theology. God may be all powerful, but humans are sinful and females are – in today’s parlance – problematic.