Along with new devotion to the flesh of Christ came devotion to his mother. In
the hands of the Sienese painter Pietro Lorenzetti (c.1280/90–1348), for example,
Mary’s life took on lively detail. In Plate 7.2, an altarpiece depicting the Birth of the
Virgin, two servants—one probably the midwife—tenderly wash the infant Mary. Her
mother, clearly modeled on the mistress of a well-to-do Italian household, sits up in
bed, gazing at the child with dreamy eyes, while, in another room, a little serving boy
whispers news of the birth to the expectant father.
