Peter Paul Rubens and breastfeeding, with some other weird pix mixed in

[walkitout]

Don't ask.

Just look at this (altho possibly not at work):

The origin of the Milky Way
http://home.comcast.net/~ammawell/peterpaulrubensthemilkyway.jpg

Bacchanal
http://gemaelde-archiv.gemaelde-webshop.de/gemaelde/std2/paul-peter-rubens-bacchanal-08624.jpg

and he did this kind of thing more than once:

http://www.wga.hu/art/r/rubens/22mythol/27mythol.jpg


Cimon and Pero
http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2001/v/n23/005988arf022n.jpg

Hey, the Romans thought this was filial piety at its highest NOT disgusting
and nasty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Charity

A theme the Dutch liked; this is in the Rijks:

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/images/aria/bk/z/bk-am-51-11.z

Someone is totally obsessed and has collected a bunch of versions:
http://regard.s47.xrea.com/romancharity/romancharity.htm

I don't know all the artists. Greuze's doesn't show contact.
http://www.spauda.lt/menas/caritas/greuze.jpg
This one is Deshay's:
http://www.sternburg-stiftung.de/gemaelde/bilder/1838_deshays_cimon.jpg

Here are some more:

http://homepage.mac.com/eeskenazi/saturno_ilust.html

Note the manuscript page caption: the natural process! Poor woman.
I think that's from an alchemical manuscript, the Aurora Consurgens, and is intended to be understood allegorically. A bit more:

http://www.celtoslavica.de/imago/_aurora.html

And probably my favorite, despite it being yet-another-in-the-Mary-nurses-Jesus-line
http://www.abcgallery.com/R/rubens/rubens62.jpg

Look! She's bored and reading a book!

Seems to me that you could write a substantial article about the meaning
and uses of breastfeeding and illustrate it exclusively with Rubens pictures.

I was a little startled to realize that that Milky Way legend was used
by more than one artist (Tintoretto did one, too, but that may be the extent of it).

Here's another one, in this case, the breast is being offered in a relatively
standard C-hold:

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=NG46

Comments

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

In my new weird and wonderful life as a parent, my first thought about the Cimon and Pero tale was "But what about her baby? Shouldn't the baby get dibs? Doesn't Cimon want grandkids?".

I suppose my reaction shows the difference in cultures and morals, not to mention expectations of infant health and mortality.

I thought about that, too

[(Anonymous)]

I had encountered references to elderly people no longer able to eat other foods being kept alive by devoted daughters(in law) who were willing to nurse them. In some cases, of course, there wouldn't be a big risk to the kid, if the child were old enough and mum's supply were ample enough. But what I've read elsewhere suggests that sometimes babies _were_ weaned early to keep grandparent alive, which is pretty creepy. Flip side, we have good bone data that a lof of Romans were starting to switch their kids at least partly over to animal milks at around 6 months, so maybe the kid was screwed anyway.