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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Art treatments & subjects > Iconography, subjects depicted in art > Human figures depicted in art
Comprising material from the 15th century through to the present
day, Portraying Pregnancy accompanies an exhibition at the
Foundling Museum, which is the first ever to focus on portraits of
pregnant women in British art. The book will be extensively
illustrated with painted portraits, drawings, miniatures, prints,
photographs, sculpture, textiles and objects. Although up to the
early 20th century many women spent most of their adult years being
pregnant, their pregnancies are seldom made apparent in surviving
portraits. Portraying Pregnancy considers the different ways in
which (from the late Middle Ages onwards) a sitter's pregnancy was,
or was not, visibly represented to the viewer. Over a span of more
than 500 years, Portraying Pregnancy interrogates how the social
mores and preoccupations of different periods have impacted the
ways in which pregnant women have been depicted - sometimes
reinforcing an 'ideal' female role (especially within a religious
context), while at other times celebrating fertility, or asserting
shock value. Prior to the 20th century, the possibility of death in
childbirth was a constant reality that brought an additional
tension to such a representation. Portraying Pregnancy also
explores the extent to which female sitters have had agency over
their depiction. Written by Karen Hearn, the leading expert on this
topic, Portraying Pregnancy will address representations of
pregnancy in a religious context; early popular and medical
understanding of pregnancy; dress and fashion; pregnancy portraits
in 16th- and early 17th-century England; mid 17th-century female
portraits; 18th-century British grand portraiture; the rarity of
19th-century images of pregnant women; the shift in early
20th-century male artists' depictions of their wives and partners,
as they began to celebrate pregnancy visually; how British women
artists now addressed their own pregnancies in their work; and
other later 20th-century nude portrayals.
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