A talk by Dr Susan Bracken on representations of mothers and motherhood, love, loss and hope in Renaissance art.
Dr Susan Bracken is at the Foundling Museum on Friday 23 October for Holding the Child: Mothers, Madonnas & Loss in Renaissance Art, a talk that looks at how motherhood was painted from the early sixteenth to the early seventeenth century. It starts with the idealised images of the Madonna and Child and moves towards more nuanced depictions, including a rare group of late-sixteenth-century portraits of pregnant women.
Bracken asks what these images reveal about maternal love, divine protection, anxiety, loss and hope, and how the Madonna seems to foresee her son's fate. The talk also touches on the gendered expectations placed on women at the time, such as the assumption that a wife was responsible if she failed to produce a son.
The venue itself fits the theme. The Foundling Museum tells the story of the Foundling Hospital, set up in 1739 by philanthropist Thomas Coram to care for babies at risk of abandonment. It was the UK's first children's charity and first public art gallery, and it looked after about 25,000 children over two centuries. The Museum opened in 2004 in a 1930s building on the old hospital site.
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The talk runs from 3:00pm to 4:00pm at 40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ. Standard in-person tickets are £18 and include Museum entry; Foundling Friends pay £6, with a small booking fee that may apply.
