The lives of women in medieval Italy are depicted around a huge bed with a gold-coloured bedspread in this painting from 15th-century Siena. In the big bed, a new mother rests, while female friends, relatives and helpers go about their work: one holds the newborn baby, another fills a washing bowl, while a servant brings a jug on her head to a woman who is heating food for the exhausted mother. In a world without any medicine to speak of, restorative snacks were considered crucial after childbirth. In this religious painting, such familiar details of everyday life make the story of the Virgin emotional and richly human, especially for a female audience.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/