Labor of Love

From Botticelli’s Madonna of the Magnificat to Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, a number of Renaissance masterpieces, especially those from Florence, are round in format. Precedents for that shape may be found in ancient Roman monuments and sarcophagi, with their “imago clipeata,” but there is another potential influence to consider that was more or less contemporaneous. In Florence during Humanism, one object was particularly widespread: the birth tray, used to serve food and wine to refresh and restore new mothers after the exhausting ordeal of giving birth. These trays were painted with appropriate motifs, wishing all the best to both the mother and the newborn child. Great families commissioned equally great painters to create them, such as Masaccio; it may well be that, more than the ancient Romans with their circular shields, the real inspiration for the Renaissance tondo was rather such trays, bestowed following childbirth in Florence.