- Larissa Bonfante –
Two surprising references to birth have recently been added to the repertoire. The
remarkable image of a baby actually emerging from the mother’s body is a birth scene
of a type previously unknown.^51 It occurs on two tiny seals from a seventh-century bc
bucchero fragment excavated at the Etruscan site of Poggio Colla, in the Mugello (see
Fig. 47.2). The crouching mother giving birth is portrayed with her face in profi le, her
hair in the long back braid typical of the seventh century bc, her knees and one arm
raised. Although images of a crouching woman are known from Etruscan art of this
period, none shows the baby being born.^52
Also recent is an intriguing interpretation of a heretofore-mysterious object, a large
bronze circle or fl at ring, sometimes decorated with a geometric pattern, found on or near
the body of a deceased woman in numerous graves of the seventh century bc. According
to Gilda Bartoloni, the object signifi ed that the woman has given birth, and as a symbol
of childbirth further attesting to the importance of child bearing and children in the
world of early Italy (Fig. 20.10).^53
KOUROTROPHOSOnce the child is born, the natural fi rst act of the mother is to nurse it at her breast. This
image is known by the Greek term kourotrophos, originally referring to anyone rearing or
taking care of a child, but used today for a female fi gure holding or nursing a child. The
image of the woman and child is so familiar to us in Western art from representations of
the Virgin Mary with the Christ child that we tend to take for granted its interpretation
Figure 20.10 Bronze ring found on the body of a deceased woman in grave 153 of the necropolis of
Castel di Decima, near Rome. (Bartoloni 2008, Fig. 2).