Desco da parto michelangelo biography
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Over time, the design of the *desco* evolved, with later versions adopting a more bowl-like shape.
Though primarily associated with childbirth, there is some debate about whether *deschi da parto* were also used to celebrate marriages. A desco da parto was usually painted with mythological, classical, or literary themes, as well as scenes of domesticity.
The wooden birth tray, or desco da parto, played a utilitarian as well as celebratory role in commemorating a child’s birth. Exhibition catalogue. Only about two dozen desci survive, some now with the surfaces sawn apart.[14] In inventories they are often described as "broken" or "old", and most apparently were used as trays until too scruffy to keep.
In some cases, a birth tray was purchased already painted, but custom-decorated with heraldry that personalized what might otherwise be a line item from a shop.
It is noteworthy for its condition, beauty, and association with the great Florentine Medici family. 158.
This tray was specially commissioned by Piero de’ Medici and Lucrezia Tornabuoni to commemorate the birth of their first-born son Lorenzo.
Eventually, ceramic bowls, or maiolica, replaced wooden birth trays as service objects during childbirth. Because childbirth and marriage were richly celebrated, a number of objects were made in honor of these rituals.
London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006.
Brown, Patricia Fortini. Google books
External links
- City Review - Feature on 2009 exhibition Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (MMA New York and Fort Worth, Texas) - trays at the end.
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Inside the Renaissance House.The Metropolitan’s Triumph of Fame() by Scheggia, Masaccio’s younger brother, is the finest and most extravagant surviving example of a birth tray. One notable example is housed at the San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum; painted by Lorenzo di Niccolò, it features the story of Diana and Actaeon on the front and allegorical figures on the back.
During the early fifteenth century, Europe continued to evolve out of a series of medieval feudal states ruled by wealthy landowners into concentrated town centers or cities functioning as powerful economic nuclei.
Such a workshop was that of the unidentified "Master of the Adimari cassone", which also produced the desco da parto showing youths playing at civettino in an urban setting, in Palazzo Davanzati, Florence.[12]
The format of the desco, usually about 50 to 60 cm across, is with twelve or sixteen sides, or from about 1430, round,[13] enclosed within a slightly raised lip integral to the panel.
At Home in Renaissance Italy. Painted childbirth trays began to appear about 1370, in the generation following the Black Death, when the tenuousness of life was more vivid than ever.[4] In the fifteenth century, D.C. Ahl found, at least one appears in almost half of all inventories she surveyed.[5] The tray, often covered with a protective cloth, served to present gifts of delicacies: a maid brings a cloth-covered desco with two carafes of water and wine to fortify Saint Anne in Paolo Uccello's fresco of the Birth of the Virgin (1436), in the Chapel of the Annunciation, Duomo of Prato,[6] Raiment might be ceremoniously brought into the specially-decorated bedchamber where the new mother lay: in a desco da parto by Masaccio of 1427,[7] the tray and a covered cup are preceded by a pair of trumpeters flying banners with the Florentine gigli.
The front (recto) often showcased elaborate scenes filled with figures, while the back (verso) displayed simpler designs, often including the heraldry of both parents. It was covered with a special cloth to function as a service tray for the mother during confinement and later displayed on the wall as a memento of the special occasion.