Holy Motherhood and Heavenly Fetus: Encouraging Maternity in Medieval Art

In many late medieval Visitation images, the Virgin Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth while John and Jesus—fully formed fetuses still in the womb—can also be seen greeting each other. This seemingly unconventional image grew in popularity in medieval Germany over the course of the fifteenth century. This paper considers an antependium from Strasbourg (1410), which is currently held at the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt but has been nearly forgotten in scholarly literature. The antependium's unique status as a woven image of Christ in the womb creates added meaning for both Eucharistic devotion and female viewership. Using the Strasbourg antependium as an exemplar of trends in late medieval German spirituality and art, this paper attempts to go beyond traditional scholarship's interest in spiritual pregnancy to assert that this image of Christ in the womb relates to concrete medieval ideas about maternity, childhood, pregnancy, and reproduction in general. The imagery offered in this 1410 antependium corresponds with Strasbourg's distinct interest in repopulating after the decimation of the Black Death. Focusing on female lay viewership, this paper will discuss how the Strasbourg antependium combines traditional medieval expectations of women's roles with the theme of holy motherhood to elevate the status of pregnancy. This artwork allowed male authority figures to engage with lay female spirituality and encourage population growth in uncertain, plague-ridden times.