tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post4615728691666081793..comments2023-05-11T21:29:47.449-07:00Comments on One Of Those Women: The Dangers of the "D" Word (Part 1)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13479061759803882187noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post-3117965790365584902010-08-11T01:28:25.572-07:002010-08-11T01:28:25.572-07:00Wonderful post. Thank you for a well thought out,...Wonderful post. Thank you for a well thought out, well written and well researched article on the subject.Kate Hansenhttp:www.katehansenart.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post-20173563823467121292009-06-26T19:26:13.769-07:002009-06-26T19:26:13.769-07:00This is fascinating. . . I was looking specificall...This is fascinating. . . I was looking specifically for any images of breastfeeding in art that may have been influenced by the Reformation (in other words, ones that were not of the Madonna and Child or other Holy Families.) Very hard to find. . . and your article gives a glimpse of why.<br /><br />At the same time John Calvin (and Luther and others from that area) were quite the lactivists. <br /><br />http://www.tulipgirl.com/index.php/2006/08/john-calvin-lactivist/TulipGirlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10491713586488210547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post-34968488499857476182008-07-17T06:04:00.000-07:002008-07-17T06:04:00.000-07:00No, the images above were painted for Churches. I...No, the images above were painted for Churches. It's just that these paintings have ended up in Museums, and the ones still owned by the Churches, are in the back cupboard under the stairs, with a dust sheet on them.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13479061759803882187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post-70084566615996272442008-07-17T01:49:00.000-07:002008-07-17T01:49:00.000-07:00This was a very thought provoking and interesting ...This was a very thought provoking and interesting post (as are the comments above). <BR/><BR/>Are the images we might see now in galleries the same as those that would have appeared in churches? Were there differences depending on the intended audience of the painting?<BR/><BR/>P.S. discovered the blog via Mike Brady's <I>Boycott Nestlé</I>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post-63071553614452204422008-07-01T11:12:00.000-07:002008-07-01T11:12:00.000-07:00a vory interesting couple of books not particularl...a vory interesting couple of books not particularly about breastfeeding, first used to be in the central library, worth checking the catalogue, it might be in the store if not on the shelf not about breastfeeding but includes some references from letters and diaries, worh tracking down<BR/>A Lasting Relationship: Parents and Children Over Three Centuries<BR/> Forgotten Children: Parent-child Relations from 1500 to 1900 Linda A.Pollock <BR/><BR/>Am particularly interested in finding out more especially after visitng the Cranach exibition, his work covered the period before the reformation, to beyond the reformation, he painted a lot of pictures of the Luther family, and there seemed to be plenty of female flesh and lactating breasts on display in his post reformation works, [ reading around his works]<BR/><BR/>There was an article on tis subject in the paper I piced up on the train yesterday<BR/>http://www.circumstitions.com/breastiron.html<BR/><BR/>Only heard about it with ref to the Amazons before, and thus quasi mythical, but it has been on my mind sinceAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post-15598942797972153422008-07-01T07:00:00.000-07:002008-07-01T07:00:00.000-07:00Yes, I prefered to reference Reformation influence...Yes, I prefered to reference Reformation influences, as opposed to 'protestant', as it's so much more complex. It's not as if the Reformation did not form whole from within the body of Catholocism in the first place. And the link made clear it was all naked bodies in sacred images, not just Mary nursing. Covering up angels in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for instance.<BR/><BR/>I too have become intrigued, and have asked a good friend of mine, who is an academic in art history, to recommend some more reading. I will post here when I get a reply.<BR/><BR/>And, of course, the range is just too great - in both geography and historical timeframes, to make any single comment on how nursing was conducted in the 'times' of these paintings.<BR/><BR/>Apart from the single comment that cultures changes, and so to does how we view both the bodies, and the nursing! And child care, of course. And I use nursing deliberatley, as doing the searches I did to garner what's in here, 'breastfeeding' was a very modern term! I fact my hard copy Shorter OED does not have it listed under 'breast' at all. And online ones I can find don't give dates. I have another friend who is a Bodleian librarian, I'll ask her to do a dating on 'breastfeeding'.<BR/><BR/>I prefer nursing and suckling. That fact that 'nursing' has changed as the cultures developed, is more reason to re-establish it, my eyes, not less. :-)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13479061759803882187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688291830429158315.post-51920883618451555572008-07-01T05:52:00.000-07:002008-07-01T05:52:00.000-07:00modern people cannot see such pictures as the o...modern people cannot see such pictures as the original viewers did. The loose hair of so many of these paintings - symbolic of virginity but if seen on a contemporary woman with a suckling child, meaning something else. And seeing a woman dressed as a noblewoman, a queen even actually breastfeeding her baby - again a very rare thing. Those higher class ladies who did nurse their own children existed but were thought to be taking on a hard job which would restrict their lives, because it was such an important duty, feeding a child. I like to think that the mother going into a cathedral seeing a representation over the door of Mary feeding Jesus did identify with her; some saints such as St Ita were actually granted the privilege of breastfeeding the holy child [albeit in a vision]; male saints such as St Francis had to make do with just giving him a cuddle. Other saints such as St Bernard were fed by Mary with her milk [in visions of course] and there were images of this. You also get images of Saints such as Francis drinking from the wound in Christ's side in art, with eucharistic overtones , and these disappear to. The Protestants didn't go in much for transubstantiation. In prereformation Europe there was a great devotion to the wounds of Christ and representations of these are not seen so much either post reformation in Catholic art<BR/>Can you recommend any reading on the change that did happen in the arts around the reformation? this link is very interestinghttp://idlespeculations-terryprest.blogspot.com/2007/03/sacred-images-and-council-of-trent.html<BR/> but I can only find Cardinal Paleotti's work in Italian and it would take too long to red it all, my Italian's not that good.<BR/>You do see a big change when you wander through the national gallery in chronological order, and it's not just no nursing madonnas. <BR/>http://laudemgloriae.blogspot.com/2007/12/nudity-in-sacred-art-good-or-bad.html<BR/>The Church did a lot of rethinking after the reformation, and many other images just seem to disappear too not just breastfeeding ones. I think maybe the answer is too complex to be explained merely by reference to breastfeeding.<BR/>Nowadays yes it is the Protestants who have fits seeing breastfeeding in sacred art<BR/>http://www.christian-travelers-guides.com/culture/cpnea.html<BR/>I don't really mind if they are blamed for the disappearance but I don't think it's true as breastfeeding still appeared in Protestant art after the Reformation.<BR/> <BR/>Not all farmers wives fed their own children, and sometimes did for economic reasons<BR/>Elizabethan Thomas Tusser wrote<BR/>Good huswives take pain, and do count it good luck<BR/>to make their own breast their own child to give suck<BR/>Though wrauling and rocking be noisome so near<BR/>yet lost by ill nursing is worser to hear.<BR/><BR/>The paintings aren't intended to show 'real life', but this doesn't mean that in real life people were shocked to see women breastfeeding<BR/>In the next century protestant clergyman Jeremy Taylor wrote <BR/>Of nursing Children, in imitation of the blessed Virgin-Mother. [ca 1649]<BR/>9. For why hath nature given to women two exuberant fontinels, which, "like two roes that are twins, feed among the lilies," and drop milk like dew from Hermon, and hath invited that nourishment from the secret recesses, where the infant dwelt at first, up to the breast where naturally now the child is cradled in the entertainments of love and maternal embraces: but that nature, having removed the babe, and carried its meat after it, intends that it should be preserved by the matter and ingredients of its constitution, and have the same diet prepared with a more mature and proportionable digestion? If nature intended them not for nourishment, I am sure it less intended them for pride and wantonness; they are needless excrescences and vices of nature, unless employed in nature's work and proper intendment. And if it be a matter of consideration, of what blood children are derived, we may also consider that the derivation continues after the birth; and therefore, abating the sensuality, the nurse is as much the mother as she that brought it forth; and so much the more, as there is a longer communication of constituent nourishment (for so are the first emanations) in this, than in the other. So that here is first the instinct, or prime intendment, of nature.<BR/><BR/> He rather reminds me of some of the artwork produced for the recent exhibition : - )Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com