Motherhood and breastfeeding in ancient Italy: an exhibition at the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome

The National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome presents the exhibition MÆTERNITÀ. Maternity and Breastfeeding in Ancient Italy, open from March 23 to June 2, 2019. The exhibition focuses on issues concerning motherhood and breastfeeding in the ancient world through an anthropological approach, which aims to put people at the center. The UNICEF Provincial Committee of Rome supports and participates in the exhibition, recognizing its scientific value and ability to build a critical link between the ancient and contemporary worlds.

Within family dynamics, children appear to be at the center of a complex system of care and attention by their mothers and other figures, especially female ones (aunts, grandmothers, nurses). In this network of relationships, children were protected by any means available, with practices ranging from religion to magic to medicine.

In the approach of curator Giulia Pedrucci (currently Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie CO-FUND fellow at the University of Erfurt-Germany), verisimilitude is important, based on hypothetical but plausible reconstructions, grounded in the method of “long duration” observable in aspects of human life within which there is a certain refractoriness to change (such as human psychology and the nature of interpersonal relationships). On display are not “museum objects” but “small” votives, reflections and testimonies of the aspects of daily life for which they were created. Several artifacts are leaving the Museum’s storerooms for the first time and have been restored for the occasion. No “masterpieces” were chosen but works that can illustrate the narrative and stimulate reflection. Visible traces of the beliefs, hopes and, ultimately, the lives of those who left them behind.

The purpose of the exhibition is to investigate issues concerning motherhood in the Etruscan and Roman worlds. Motherhood is analyzed from a new point of view: the focus is not exclusively on the mother and child, but broadens to include all the figures who may have assisted, or sometimes perhaps even hindered, the mother in the period from conception to the child’s reaching adulthood. Numerous female figures gravitated around the mother and child with much more active roles than today. Not forgetting the father who, along with the pedagogue (teacher), was probably more present in the lives of the young than we are wont to think. Written sources have unfortunately left us little information and moreover indirect, usually mediated by male authors who wrote for or belonged to the higher social classes. Besides that, it is rare to find information concerning women and children in their daily lives in the works that have come down to us, which deal almost exclusively with “noble” literary genres, such as poetry, oratory, and history. A great help can come from archaeology. Votive statuettes of women with children are found throughout the ancient Mediterranean. They are commonly called kourotrophoi. Insouthern Etruria and Latium they are numerous, and it is in these areas that a type of statuette appears that is not attested elsewhere: that of the couple with a child. The couple may consist of either two women or a man and a woman. Appropriately contextualized within what we know or can reconstruct about the Etruscan and Roman family, these figurines seem to tell us a different “microhistory.” For a long time scholars have thought that the child in ancient society was not considered important, but the reading offered here reveals the concerns, care and attention to which the child was constantly subjected.

Ticket price: full 8 €, reduced 18/25 years old 2 €. Free for eligible and all first Sunday of the month, Aug. 15, Sept. 29
For all information you can call +39 06 3226571, send an email to mn-etru.comunicazione@beniculturali.it or visit www.villagiulia.beniculturali.it.

Pictured: terracotta votive statuette depicting a family covered by the same mantle, detail

Source: press release

Motherhood and breastfeeding in ancient Italy: an exhibition at the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome

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