A breastfeeding mother looks up. Her gentle smile and the way her hands are held tenderly around the baby emphasise the intimate nature of the scene. In the seventeenth century, the nursing mother epitomised maternal love. Doctors, theologians, moralists and educationalists all agreed: breastfeeding was good, it was healthy for the baby and would inspire motherly love. The title refers to Mary, Jesus’s mother according to Christian belief, which explains Bloemaert’s idealised image. But the scene also exudes something very ordinary, perhaps because the painter had just become a father himself. [text 2025]

In the newly Protestant Northern Netherlands, depictions of the Virgin and Child were painted less and less, but the thema was still very popular in the partly Catholic city of Utrecht. Hendrick’s father and master in painting, Abraham Bloemaert, painted several versions of Maria. His way of composing must have influences Hendrick’s work. This painting has a highly realistic expression. The intimite character of the scene is reminiscent of a mortal mother with her newborn: something Hendrick, who became a father himself shortly after 1631, must have seen daily.