The Garden of Youth by Desco de Parto in the Princeton University Art Museum, April 2017

Italian

Desco da Parto: The Garden of Youth, ca. 1430

Tempera on wood panel

diam. 57.5 cm (22 5/8 in.) frame: 65.7 x 66.4 x 6.3 cm (25 7/8 x 26 1/8 x 2 1/2 in.)

Bequest of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.

y1963-3


Gallery Label
In fifteenth-century Italian households, childbirth was a highly anticipated but potentially perilous event often associated with special objects designed to assist expectant mothers. A desco da parto, or “birthing tray,” was used to carry gifts and food to new mothers recovering in the confinement chamber. A lavishly decorated desco like this one was found only in the wealthiest family collections, but household inventories show that more modest examples were common in lower social classes. The scene depicted here conforms to the festive tone characteristic of deschi da parto. It alludes to paradisiacal themes and allegorical representations of love that were popular in vernacular literature, such as the poetry of Boccaccio and Petrarch.

Text from: artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/29114