The Madonna del Parto is a fresco painting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...

, finished around 1460. It is housed in the Museo della Madonna del Parto of Monterchi

Monterchi

Monterchi is a comune in the Province of Arezzo in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 80 km southeast of Florence and about 20 km east of Arezzo...

, Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

, Italy.

Piero della Francesca finished it in seven days of work, using first-rate colors, including a large extent of blu oltremare obtained by lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color....

 imported from Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

 by the Republic of Venice

Republic of Venice

The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...

.

The fresco was once located in Santa Maria di Momentana (once Santa Maria in Silvis), an old country church in the hilltown of Monterchi. The edifice was destroyed in 1785 by an earthquake and the work was detached and placed over the high altar of the new cemetery chapel and in 1992 it was moved to the Museo della Madonna del Parto in Monterchi. The work was attributed to Piero della Francesca only in 1889. Its dating has been the subject of debate, ranging from 1450 to 1475. The 16th century artist and writer Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...

 wrote that it was completed in 1459, when Piero della Francesca was in Sansepolcro

Sansepolcro

Sansepolcro , is a town and comune in Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Arezzo.Situated on the upper reaches of the Tiber river, Borgo was the birthplace of the painters Piero della Francesca, Raffaellino del Colle and Angiolo Tricca...

 for his mother's death.

The fresco also plays an important role in Richard Hayer's novel Visus, in Andrei Tarkovsky's film Nostalghia

Nostalghia

Nostalghia is a 1983 Soviet film, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and starring Oleg Yankovsky, Domiziana Giordano and Erland Josephson.The plot of the film centers around the meaning of the term nostalgia, which describes a longing for the past, often in idealized form.-Plot:The opening scene is a...

, and in the poem "San Sepolcro" by Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham is an American poet. The U.S. Poetry Foundation suggests "She is perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation". She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position...

.

Overview

The portrayal of a pregnant Madonna was a theme depicted sometimes in the early 14th century Tuscany (examples include Taddeo Gaddi

Taddeo Gaddi

Taddeo Gaddi was a medieval Italian painter and architect.-Biography:He was the son of Gaddo di Zanobi, called Gaddo Gaddi. He was a member of Giotto's workshop from 1313 to 1337, when his master died...

, Bernardo Daddi

Bernardo Daddi

Bernardo Daddi was an early Italian renaissance painter and apprentice of Giotto. He was also influenced by the Sienese art of Lorenzetti....

 and Nardo di Cione

Nardo di Cione

Nardo di Cione , was an Italian painter, sculptor and architect from Florence. He was the brother of the more accomplished Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna, as well as Jacopo di Cione; they were important members of the Painter’s Guild of Florence...

). The Madonna was portrayed standing, alone, with a closed book on her belly, an allusion to the embodied Word.

Piero della Francesca's Madonna has neither books nor royal attributes as in the medieval predecessors of the picture. She is portrayed with a hand against her side to support her prominent belly. At her side are two angels, who are keeping open a pavilion decorated with pomegranate

Pomegranate

The pomegranate , Punica granatum, is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing between five and eight meters tall.Native to the area of modern day Iran, the pomegranate has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times. From there it spread to Asian areas such as the Caucasus as...

s, a symbol of Christ's passion. The upper part of the painting is lost. The two angels are specular, as they were realized by the artist with the same holed fresco cartoons.

The theological symbolism behind the representation is rather complex. Maurizio Calvesi has suggested that the tent would be a representation of the Ark of the Covenant

Ark of the Covenant

The Ark of the Covenant , also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a chest described in Book of Exodus as solely containing the Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed...

. Maria would be thus the new Ark of Alliance in her role as mother of Jesus. For other scholars the tent is a symbol of the Catholic Church and the Madonna would symbolize the tabernacle, as she is portrayed containing Jesus' body.