formal adoption rite. Witnesses stand gravely by. An
"This picture
Reveals how Hercules, son of Uni, drank milk." Here a
The mirror
and third centuries B.C. Apparently this was a motif
Figures of breastfeeding mothers or kourotrophoi either
holding children or actually suckling them were popular all over Italy-they appear in Etruscan, South
Italian, and Sicilian art, in areas where the notion
birth of kids had never ceased to be important.
Some of these images have lived, with their awesome presence: the so-called Mater Matuta from
Chiusi, a large flagstone cinerary urn dating from the fifth
century B.C., depicting a woman holding a baby in
her lap; a mom breastfeeding two infants from Megara
Hyblaea, near Syracuse, in Sicily, from the sixth century; and an entire series of some 200 "mums" or kourotrophoi from a refuge near Capua, in South
Italy, holding as many as 14 children. (The latter are
only sometimes nursing.) All present the topic of
fertility on a monumental scale. Thousands of small,
Economical terracotta votive figurines from sanctuaries
were also offered as gifts to strong mother goddesses.142 Written sources and inscriptions give us the
Minerva,
Extraordinary, by comparison, is the conspicuous lack
of the motif of the nursing mother from Classical
Greek art. Here, too, a strong taboo is definitely called for. https://s3.amazonaws.com/beach-naturist/young-busty-nude-beach.html is otherwise hard to describe why such a
should be so studiously averted. Like female nudity,
this picture enters the repertory of Greek art solely in the
genre themes.
LARISSA BONFANTE
[AJA 93
Brian Shefton has revealed, it is used nearly alone
for figures of Aphrodite with her child, Eros, on
painted vases of South Italy or Sicily. There, the
Greek colonists had become accustomed to local customs and beliefs.'44
Could the lack of this image from Ancient
Greek art reflect life? Fascinating studies have concentrated
on the issue of breast-feeding by the mother in various
cultures and civilizations.145 Certainly aristocraticor even "bourgeois"-Greek and Roman ladies infrequently
nursed their infants-they'd wet nurses, often slaves
from their own household.
known from Greek art-for example on Greek funerary stelai, where she hands the infant to the seated
Mommy.146 It's a sign of civilization for a lady to be
freed of this embarrassingly physical requirement, all too
reminiscent of our lowly animal nature. And indeed
free nudist photos represents barbarians, along with animals or wild creatures for example centaurs nursing their young."47 The lack of such an
Significant image, nevertheless, is not so much due to the
fact that ladies didn't nurse their own children, or
that the picture of the wet nurse was too unimportant
to be represented, except in a secondary role, in relation to the mother-definitely not in the private action of
holding the baby at her breast. The reason is quite to
be sought in the approach to any kind of female exposure or nudity, felt to be overly private, unique, shameful
and dangerous, all at precisely the same time.
The image of the female breast was too strong to
be represented casually in art.
and the frontal face, the sight of the nude breast has a
double job. It's a sign of helplessness; at the same
NUDITY AS A COSTUME IN ANCIENT ART
time it's a remarkablemagic force.148 The face of
The
evil eye can destroy, or save. It's no coincidencethat
the herm consists of a frontal face and an erect phallus: it was meant to serve an apotropaicfunction,protecting the city and its citizens.149 A grotesque statuette of a nude woman nursing an infant makes use of
the potent image of the naked female breast (fig. 9).s10
CONCLUSIONS
nudity was depicted in art in both Greece and
Italy, but with different significance. In https://s3.amazonaws.com/beach-naturist/nude-family-porn-games.html -Homeric awareness of man nudity was overturned, while for girls, especiallyin Athens, the old
significance of the disgrace, humiliation, and vulnerability of exposure and nudity remained unchanged.
In Italy, Greek culture brought with it its "modern" ways, without, however, changing customs and
attitudesdeeply rootedin the religion and traditionsof