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Muses of the Masterpiece: Iconic Mothers in Art History
- Avani
- 5 hours ago
- 7 min read
Even before we knew how to hold a brush or a pencil, our mothers were there and knew somehow to fill color on the canvas of our lives. Mothers have always been iconic figures in this world, not just because of how they care for their children but also because of their motherhood instincts.
This makes mothers the most complicated yet contemplated muses. Motherhood has always been a topic of conversation, but it is still impossible to cover this topic completely. This makes it a profound muse throughout history. From giving a new life to the lesson of how to live that life, a simple artwork cannot define the responsibility of motherhood, and simple words cannot cover the emotions and intimacy of it.
Still, from classical painters to new fashionistas, they have tried to honor the maternal figures of their lives. Adding to that honor, in this blog, we will talk about the iconic mothers in art history.
Celebrating Mother’s Day - Motherhood and Creativity
As soon as Mother’s Day arrives, we all go to Google and search for Mother's Day gift ideas, sometimes totally forgetting that we, their children, are the gifts our mothers asked for.
Artworks on motherhood in galleries, museums, and collections reflect reality at some angles. But we almost forget that mothers are also molded by societal control and cultural longing.
They are iconic, no doubt about it, but in every era, tradition, and civilization, one thing is the same: the truth—Did the artists paint the mother that existed or just what the artwork needed? So this Mother's Day, we will try to understand this evolution of the masterpieces. Through the visual arts and evolving landscape of fashion, we will discuss how we have dressed, draped, and defined mothers in art.
And I will leave it to you to decide if we have done a good job at it.
Ooh!! Secret tip—this Mother's Day, spend the day with her; plan everything, from a dinner date to a hot air balloon ride or just a movie marathon. It will mean much more to her than any gift you get shipped to her doorstep.
The First Mother the World Ever Painted
So, let's go back to the very beginning—where it all started, the first time a painter picked up a brush and decided that the most worthy subject to paint about is not romantic love but the love that we get introduced to when we are just a cell.
Renaissance Madonna—we are all aware of the most famous paintings of the Madonna and Child.
The Renaissance didn't invent motherhood, but it definitely uplifted maternal love.
During the Renaissance, which was centered in Italy around the 1300s, the Catholic Church was the biggest art commissioner of the era. It is believed that they used to hire painters and artists to create artworks that glorify faith. And this started the competition between the artists to paint the most perfect mother.
Yes, as controversial as it may sound, the mothers in art, there’s a fair chance that it was propaganda.
A mother so idealized, serene, glowing, kind, and untouched by the mess of real life that she became impossible.
The Madonna became the first icon of motherhood—a creation of reality or of imagination; no one can know.
Although there is no doubt that the artworks that were created in this process are truly legendary, they are the most famous paintings of mothers. For instance, Madonna of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci. The painting is set in a dark, rocky grotto, showing the Virgin Mary, the infant Jesus, John the Baptist, and an angel. Mary’s hand is hovering over the child and not touching him. Made in the sfumato technique, the artwork shows the mother as a being of divine nature.
Fact Time: Do You Know? Madonna of the Rocks was actually painted for a Milanese religious confraternity. It was a contractual job.
More to explore - What is Mom Art: Women Artists Balancing Art & Motherhood
The Divine Mother Has Many Faces
Motherhood is the most universal human language that has ever existed.
Before the Renaissance, or the Church, the image of a mother holding a child had already existed.
Among multiple civilizations, across traditions and cultures, there are mothers who have been chosen by the divine or maybe mothers who chose the divine.
Like many of the Mary statues and paintings that exist in Europe, till date, Indians cannot get enough of the Little Krishna’s stories with his mother, Yashoda.
Yashoda was Krishna’s foster mother, but she loved him so purely that even God himself could not stop himself from giving in to his mother’s love. The most famous story depicting the love of Krishna for her mother is—Krishna playfully did something wrong, and Yashoda tried to tie him as a punishment, but every rope she tried was somehow 2 inches short. But after some time, Little Lord Krishna lets himself get tied up out of love, her love for him.
Fascinating! Isn't it?
Yashoda has been and still today is one of the most well-known maternal figures in art. The stories of joy and playfulness are still depicted today through artwork, music, dance, and theater.
If you really want to see a classical feminine aesthetic in her mom phase, have a look at "Yashoda and Krishna" by Raja Ravi Varma—a masterpiece of vintage motherhood aesthetic that was recently sold for ₹167.2 crore ($18 million).
The artwork depicts the maternal style of the Indian women; Yashoda is milking a cow (who is also a mother) while Krishna is standing behind her, holding an empty glass, waiting for his mother to give him fresh cow’s milk.
The Most Famous Bored Woman in Art History
Anna Whistler, sitting in a chair in black with her hands folded and face blank, is one of the most iconic maternal artworks in history.
But it was an accident, or a pure coincidence, because the model that the painter James McNeill Whistler had invited cancelled at the last minute, and Anna was the backup model.
With no warmth in her posture and no eye contact, Whistler’s Mother analysis is critical, and the topic is always up for discussion. This painting was never claimed to be about motherhood, but is seen as a symbol of mothers as muses and is now worldwide known as Whistler’s Mother.
However, the artwork is originally titled “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1."
Women Who Painted It From The Inside
MARY CASSATT
Mary Cassatt's motherhood paintings, like The Child’s Bath, are proof that a woman doesn't need to give birth in order to be a mother.
She was a single woman with no children and yet painted motherhood with more honesty than her peers. She was an impressionist woman, the only woman in the French Impressionist inner circle.
Zero romanticism and pure work, making the mothers in art history.
KATHE KOLLWITZ
Her artworks on motherhood were her inner emotions. She lost her son in WWI. He was just 18 years old; it's a pain no mother would wish upon another.
It's the pain she converted into colors in the next 30 years, painting, sculpting, and etching. Her mother series depicts mothers in circles together to shield their children with all they have. The survival instinct, the love for a life other than their own.
The Mothers Who Refused The Frame
Real | Unfiltered | Unapologetic
Dorothea Lange - Migrant Mother
Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother's impact was huge. This photograph was taken in 1936 in Nipomo, California. The muse, Florence Owens Thompson, is a mother with 7 children and no food. This image became the symbol of the Great Depression; it showed the suffering and desperation of the migrants along with their resilience and strength.
The photo shows the mother as a muse with her jaw set and two of her children pressed against her, but their faces are turned away. They were living on frozen vegetables and birds caught by the children.
The impact was so large that within the publishing of it, the US government sent about 20,000 pounds of food to the camp. Although by the time the food reached the camp, the family had already moved.
This image became so famous and was used so widely, but all without Florence’s permission; she never received a single penny for it. She had asked the photo to be withdrawn, but it wasn't. She lived struggling and died that way, too; her family had to crowdfund to pay her funeral expenses.
The photo that fed a nation's guilt—fed no one in the frame.
Frida Kahlo - My Birth (1932)
"Maternal themes in Surrealism" sounds vague. Though Andre Breton, who founded Surrealism, declared her a Surrealist, Frida explicitly rejected this label.
She painted her reality; her paintings were a series of events that happened in her life.
The most confrontational maternal artwork she made in history is “My Birth," a painting depicting a mother giving birth to a child. The child's head is unusually big; the room is empty, with neither furniture nor any living being present there; the white sheets under her legs are covered with blood; and the mother’s face is hidden with a white sheet as if she were dead.
Frida refused to show the mother in a frame of divinity and greatness that society expects of her. Rather, she made the choice to put the rawest version on canvas.
The artwork was made in 1932; she had suffered a miscarriage, and her mother had died that year, too. The loss she felt was of both losing a mother and the chance to be a mother.
Too raw, too clinical, too female—it is one of the most important feminist artworks ever made.
The Canvas Will Never Be Big Enough
Every artist painted the mother they needed; the image kept changing, but the reality never did. Some chose to show the divine side of motherhood, while some chose to show the emotions that come with it. Tragic, lethal, and yet beautiful.
But have you ever stopped to think that the painting is just a surface? Underneath it is always a real person, a real story, and a real wound, and a canvas is not really big enough to contain that.
Try to tie the mother, but she will never fit in the frame of the mothers in art we know today. They are the greatest ones who dared to break the frame.
Though
The most iconic mother you will ever know is not hanging in a museum; she is in your life, your memory, and your phone gallery. She will show up in your life every day without the glamour, canvas, or recorded movements that make her the greatest muse of all.
The canvas will never be big enough.
