Summary: What can medieval sculptural representations of women tell us about medieval women's experiences of motherhood? Presumably the work of male sculptors, working for clerical patrons, these sculptures are unlikely to have been shaped by women's maternal experiences during their production. Once produced, however, their beholders would have included women who were mothers and potential mothers. Building on theories of reception and response, this book focuses on interactions between women as beholders and a range of sculptures made in France in the twelfth through sixteenth centuries in order to provide insight into women's experiences of motherhood. These interactions show motherhood to have been a transformative and an ambivalent experience for medieval women as it brought together empowerment and subordination, intimacy and separation, joy and grief, life and death, salvation and suffering.

Contents: Introduction - Motherhood and Meaning in Medieval Sculpture ; Motherhood as Transformation - From Annunciation to Visitation at Reims ; Motherhood as Monstrosity - The Moissac Femme-aux-serpents and the Transi of Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendome ; Resurrecting Lazarus - The Eve from Saint-Lazare at Autun ; Visualizing Parturition - Devotional Sculptures of the Virgin and Child ; Afterword - Motherhood and Meaning - Medieval Sculpture and Contemporary Art. (Boydell Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture)

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