Pregnancy in art covers any artistic work that portrays pregnancy. In art, as in life, it is often unclear whether an actual state of pregnancy is intended to be shown. A common visual indication is the gesture of the woman placing a protective open hand on her abdomen. Historically, married women were at some stage of pregnancy for much of their life until menopause, but the depiction of this in art is relatively uncommon,MOMA, New York, Note on Klimt's Hope II and generally restricted to some specific contexts. This probably persists even in contemporary culture; despite several recent artworks depicting heavily pregnant women, one writer was "astonished at the shortage of visual images ... of pregnant women in public visual culture".Matthews, 1–2 A research study conducted by Pierre Bourdieu in 1963 found that the great majority of 693 French subjects thought that a photo of a pregnant woman could not, by definition, be beautiful.Matthews, 19
There are two subjects often depicted in Western narrative art, or history painting, where pregnancy is an important part of the story. These are the unhappy scene usually called Diana and Callisto, showing the moment of discovery of Callisto's forbidden pregnancy, and the biblical scene of the Visitation.Hall, 251; the entry on "Pregnancy" mentions only these two. Gradually, portraits of pregnant women began to appear, with a particular fashion for "pregnancy portraits" in elite portraiture of the years around 1600.
As well as being a subject for depiction in art, pregnant women were also consumers of art, with some special types of work developed for them, including Madonna del Parto images of Mary.
Traditional and ancient cultures Images of pregnant women, especially small figurines, were made in traditional cultures in many places and periods, though it is rarely one of the most common types of image. These include ceramic figures from some Pre-Columbian cultures, and a few figures from most of the ancient Mediterranean cultures. Many of these seem to be connected with fertility. Identifying whether such figures are actually meant to show pregnancy is often a problem, as well as understanding their role in the culture concerned.Talalay, Lauren E., "Archaeological Ms.conceptions: Contemplating Gender and the Greek Neolithic", in Representations of Gender From Prehistory To the Present, 5-9, 2000, Springer, , 9781349623310. For an international survey of the subject in general, see The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines, ed. Timothy Insoll, 2017, Oxford University Press, , 9780199675616, which has few mentions of pregnancy in its 900 pages. For Pre-Classic examples from the Highlands of Guatemala, see Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volumes 2 and 3
Among the oldest surviving examples of the depiction of pregnancy are prehistoric figurines found across much of Eurasia and collectively known as Venus figurines. The best known is the Venus of Willendorf, an oolitic limestone figurine of a woman whose breasts and hips have been exaggerated to emphasise her fertility. These figurines exaggerate the abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs, or vulva of the subject, but the degree to which the figures appear to be pregnant varies considerably, and most are not noticeably pregnant at all.Roberts, 747; Cook An inevitably subjective survey of the corpus of about 140 figurines concluded that only 17% of them represented pregnant women, extending to 39% "which could possibly represent pregnancy".Taiz, 19
Western art
In Europe, depictions of pregnancy were largely avoided in classical art (apart from small votive figures), but later Western art had two subjects that were frequently depicted where pregnancy was integral to the narrative.
Callisto In Greek mythology the nymph Callisto became pregnant by Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans) in disguise. Her pregnancy was spotted when she was bathing, and her furious mistress Artemis (Diana) sent her away; Jupiter's wife Juno then turned her into a bear. The few classical depictions tended to show this transformation, but in later art the traumatic moment of discovery was most often depicted, especially from the Renaissance onwards, using the Roman poet Ovid as the source.Hall, 102–103, 251; Roberts, 752
What became the typical composition was first seen in Titian's Diana and Callisto (1559), where Callisto's abdomen is exposed as Artemis/Diana points accusingly at her and her other followers display a variety of reactions. Although Ovid places the discovery in the ninth month of Callisto's pregnancy (Metamorphoses II, 441–465), in paintings she is generally shown with a rather modest bump for late pregnancy. But this is appropriate as the scene shows the moment when her intimate companions first realized that she was pregnant. It is clear that the main attraction of the subject was the opportunity to depict a group of female nudes,Roberts, 752 though it could be claimed that it illustrated the serious consequences of an unwanted pregnancy.
Virgin Mary Depictions of Mary were by far the most frequent images featuring a pregnant woman in post-classical Western art, and probably remain so to the modern day. The moment of Mary's conception of Jesus, called the Annunciation, is one of the most common subjects in traditional Christian art,Schiller, 35–52 but depictions from later in her pregnancy are also common. Unlike many other kinds of depictions of pregnancy, there is usually no ambiguity as to whether Mary is intended to be shown while pregnant, even where the pregnancy is not clearly visualized.
The Visitation, a meeting between two pregnant women, Mary and Elizabeth, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke , was very often depicted,Schiller, 55 but their pregnancy is usually not emphasized visually, at least until Early Netherlandish painting of the 15th century.Jolly, Chapter 1Roberts, 749 Medieval thinking held that Elizabeth was about seven months pregnant at the meeting, and Mary about one.Following , where Elizabeth is six months pregnant at the Annunciation. The relevant medieval Western feasts were Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on 25 June, and Christmas on 25 December. The feast of the Visitation itself was on 2 July, rather illogically, as it was then after the birth of John.
The loose full clothes used in religious art, as in normal medieval life, make it hard to detect in any case. In late medieval paintings they may be shown with vertical gaps in their clothes; female medieval dress had openings that were normally closed by laces when dressing, but could be left open during pregnancy. These may be either at the front or the sides, and are used in art to indicate pregnancy, although from about 1450 such gaps, revealing a contrasting colour of undergarment, became a fashion and can be seen in art on slim, unmarried women.
In some cases one or the other places a hand on the bump of the other, as in Rogier van der Weyden's Leipzig version (illustrated). A few images, mostly Byzantine or Late Medieval German, show their unborn children in the womb, as though in a modern cutaway drawing. In German images they are naked (though usually with halos) and John the Baptist bows or kneels to Jesus, who raises a hand in blessing.Schiller, 56; Hall, 251, 337 It should be emphasized that in all periods the majority of depictions have little visual indication that either woman is pregnant; the story was well known to its audience.
Some other images showed the pregnant Virgin with Saint Joseph or other relatives, including some of the Journey to Bethlehem for the birth. This last was a standard part of Byzantine cycles, but rare in the Western church.Schiller, 58 There are a few images of Joseph and Mary looking for shelter or being turned away at the inn in Bethlehem, mostly from north of the Alps after 1500; in these Mary is usually clearly pregnant.The subject is not covered by Schiller. It is called the Herbergssuche ("Search for shelter") in German. See the category on Wikimedia Commons.
The rare subject of the Doubting of Joseph also needed to establish Mary's pregnancy, and some versions indicated this by unlaced openings in her dress or a "cutaway" unborn Jesus.Jolly, Chapter 1, after fig 1.5, illustrates both types; Schiller, 56–57 In this scene, based on and apocryphal elaborations, Joseph is unsettled by the pregnancy of his virgin bride, but is later reassured by an angel who comes to him in a dream, the first of his four dreams in Matthew. Mary is often shown spinning while pregnant; the spinning figure with "cutaway" illustrated has Joseph's head appearing through the tracery at left.Schiller, 57, figs 141 and 142
In a similar painting in Budapest, where Mary spun while Joseph slept and the angel appeared to him, the unborn Jesus is not visible in the painting now, but can be seen in the underdrawing with infrared reflectography. Either the artist or patron had a change of mind at the time, or it was overpainted later, perhaps as the motif came to be felt indecorous or primitive.Image, with note from the Hungarian National gallery Other similar images are of Mary alone, especially as statues; these are called Maria gravida ("Pregnant Mary") and are covered below.
A number of Early Netherlandish paintings show Mary Magdalene with the same unlaced opening in her dress. Penny Howell Jolly has proposed that this motif represents her "spiritual pregnancy", although in his account of the most famous example, The Descent from the Cross by van der Weyden (c. 1435, now Prado) Lorne Campbell notes the unlacing, but attributes it merely to Mary Magdalene's distressed condition.
Madonna del Parto is a term for figures of the Virgin Mary especially associated with pregnancy and childbirth, or showing the Virgin pregnant. These are not very common; the best known is the fresco by Piero della Francesca, where a heavily pregnant Mary has a prominent unlaced opening at the front of her dress, and another at the side. However, these depictions fell from fashion during the Renaissance, and the Piero is the latest known from Tuscany.Ferrie These attracted the devotions of pregnant women or those concerned for them, as well as those wanting a pregnancy. Queen Claude of France, who had seven children before dying at the age of 24, had the painting of the Visitation by Sebastiano del Piombo (now Louvre) in her chamber."Claude de France", 80–81, Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England, edited by Diana Maury Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin, google books
A few of these images of Mary feature a "cutaway" view of Jesus in utero within, as found in some images of the Visitation (see above), and many have the same protective gesture of the hand on the stomach, which also features in portraits of pregnant women when these begin to appear. After the Counter-Reformation a visualized in utero Jesus becomes rare, and instead Mary may be shown with the Christogram "IHS" on her stomach.See the Wikimedia Commons category
In Eastern Orthodox icons, the in utero Jesus, which is normally fully clothed, remains part of the tradition for certain representations to the present day. It is found in one of the most famous Russian icons, the 12th-century Ustyug Annunciation in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, which has the birth-size Child shown inside the chest area, and in the icons of Mary of the type known as Pomozhenie rodam in Russian, translated as "Help in childbirth" (or "Succour in travail").
Portraits