I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood
And found it a queendom, a wild queendom.

(Liz Berry)

Since the Upper Palaeolithic Venus figurine, believed to be a symbol of fecundity, the representation of motherhood remains a frequent and universal theme. Every artist has a mother (the nature and intensity of the relationship notwithstanding), and some artists are also mothers—so there is a wealth of material to translate onto canvas, into stone, music, or literature. Like other themes in art, the imagery of mothers, from caregivers to fighters, is a reflection of society’s values and beliefs at the time the artwork was created.

The goddess

Mythology and religion celebrated the role of women as creators of life and connected to god(s). Born at the dawn of creation, Gaia was the mother of all life, of all gods, titans, cyclops, and mortals. On Greek vases, Gaia is depicted as a curvy woman with large breasts, reclining on the Earth, or rising from the Earth. Her Roman equivalent, Terra—Mother Earth—is the goddess who nurtures and sustains all that is alive on the planet. We see her on Roman mosaics, Renaissance sculptures and in neo-classical paintings, surrounded by symbols of fertility and abundance. To this day, Gaia/Terra or her descendant is considered the mother of all things alive, as implied by the expression ‘mother nature.’

The ideal mother, the Virgin, added new dimensions to an already strong character: purity and devotion. The Virgin Mary is another incarnation of deity, as the mother of the son of God. Western museums are saturated by (mainly Renaissance) images of the beautiful Virgin and her baby, often painted by an artist who had never seen a real life infant. Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels on the Melun Diptych (now in the Prado Museum) is such an example. The child is a reduced scale adult, sitting on his mother’s knee with a rather grumpy expression. The Virgin, with stark white porcelain skin and pale blue eyes, is wearing the low cut gown fashionable at the time, showing a spherical breast. It is a portrait of the beautiful Agnès Sorel, Charles VII’s official mistress. Fifteenth-century French society did not raise an eyebrow at this ironic representation.

The Madonna and Child is one of the most enduring themes in Western art and features in some of the most significant paintings created during the High Renaissance. In one of the most moving examples, Raphael mastered the soft, enamoured gaze of a young mother. She is sitting in front of us, not on a throne like Agnès but on a rock in a garden. Held protectively between her draped knees, the baby reaches towards the bird St John is offering him; his small foot resting on his mother’s foot, he is relaxed, safe.

The lioness

A woman lifts a 3000 pound truck with her bare hands to free her son, trapped under it. Another woman wrestles a polar bear to protect her child until a hunter arrives. These are true stories, and there are many more which never made the headlines. The phenomenon that enables these average size women to perform superhuman tasks is referred to as ‘hysterical strength.’ It is not enough to protect the unborn baby with her body and release them into the world: ours is a dangerous world, and the young human needs to be nurtured, cared for and defended until his physical and cognitive capacities enable him to fend for himself.

Maman, a bronze, steel and marble giant sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, poignantly illustrates this. The 30 ft sculpture of a spider carrying her eggs vividly represents the strength and determination of the mother to protect her offspring: she becomes a giant. According to the artist, the work is a tribute to her mother who was a weaver.

Creating, nurturing, educating, and taking care of the next generation is a role recognised by all societies as essential. The intimacy that blossoms between mother and child, the first strong, formative relationship with another human being, has been the inspiration for many works of art.

Berthe Morisot’s The Cradle is a moving painting depicting a scene of serenity and intimacy. The mother’s gaze, directed to the baby’s face (it seems a fair assumption that the woman in the painting is the mother), is a combination of affection and wonder. Her hand at the foot of the cradle holds a transparent curtain that protects the infant from the viewer’s eye, from the world, as well as creating the other diagonal in the picture. Like all happy couples, mother and infant mirror each other’s pose, a hand resting on the cheek.

The concept of protection has a physical expression. In Chantal Joffe’s Self-Portrait with Esmé, like in other portraits of mother and child (Elisabeth Vigé LeBrun with Julia), the larger form embraces, surrounds and engulfs the smaller one, to provide complete shielding.

The Heroine

Unlike these idyllic images, other artists, like Kathe Kollwitz, whose son died in WWI, or Picasso (the painting of a woman and her child in prison) reflect the fear of being unable to protect the children from hardship, pain, or loss. If the world is unfair or dangerous, the mother must strive to change it for the sake of the next generation.

From Boudicca, leader of the uprising against the Romans, often portrayed with her daughters, to today’s freedom fighters, mothers have been engaged in social and political activism. One of the weaknesses of the feminist movement, created in order to confront inequality in a patriarchal society, was its complex relationship with motherhood. It took until the XXIst century for a feminist to accept that ‘the ideal of feminism needed to include childcare and a place for children because children are part of society and women's lives and that you can't really divorce that fact from being a woman, being a feminist and being an artist.’ (Laura Silagi).

In the Soviet Union, the constitution guaranteed equal rights for women since the 1950s and motherhood was lauded. Soviet art created a wealth of images of women at work, in the fields and in factories, active contributors to the economy. The strong Soviet woman continued to create a home too, and to raise children. The poster Glory to the Mother Heroine by Nina Vatolina features a young woman surrounded by her ten children, varying in age from the toddler in her arms to young adults. We know they are her children because she proudly wears the Order of the Mother Heroine for raising a family of ten or more children. A heroine indeed.