Introduction to the Early Modern Child in Art and History

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INTRODUCTION: THE EARLY MODERN CHILD

IN ART AND HISTORY

Matthew Knox Averett

Tis book uses art historical evidence to illuminate early modern children: theirbirths, lives and early deaths. Te topics range chronologically rom the feenthcentury to the eighteenth, and geographically across England, France, Ger-many, Italy and Spain; the essays cover a variety o media, including painting,sculpture and the graphic arts. Te book is comprised o ten essays organizedin our parts. Te two essays in Part I: Infants consider different and unusual

ways in which adults deal with the absence o inants. aken together, the essaysunderscore the importance and centrality o children in early modern Europeansociety. Part II: Children and Violence consists o two essays that examine sepa-rate instances o children as perpetrators o violence. Tese studies elucidatethe social attitudes on a range o issues such as childhood innocence, justice,cruelty and morality. Part III: Picturing Children and Childhood eatures threeessays that consider paintings o children as means o identity creation. Finally,

Part IV: Great Expectations presents three essays that consider the educationand expectations o children, ofen in political contexts, shedding light on thedemands early modern adults placed on children.

Tree Young Girls

Some our hundred years ago, an anonymous ollower o William Larkin painted a hal-length portrait o three young girls (Fig. I.1). Tough ostensibly

a simple portrait, the image takes some investigation to gain all the inormationthat the painting gives, affording viewers today a glimpse o the changes in thelives o children that have taken place over the last our centuries. Te girls arelikely sisters, as they hold hands or link arms amiliarly. Tey are dressed identi-cally and wear identical tiaras, necklaces and earrings. Tey hold or wear objectsgiven by adults with the intent to teach these children how to be adults. Indeed,

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2 Te Early Modern Child in Art and History

the objects which the sitters hold can ofen convey a wide array o meaning.1 Te artist meticulously depicted abric, hair, dress, jewelry and other accessories,and the girls’ expensive possessions indicate amilial wealth. It is hypothesizedthat the painting was made afer the death o the girls’ mother; the gold ringon the lef hand o the middle child is adult-sized (indicated by the string usedto tie the ring to the wrist), suggesting that the ring could have belonged to thegirl’s mother and is kept now by the child as a memento. 2 Te owers in thechildren’s hair can have a range o meanings in various oral languages. Blue hya-cinths, or example, can represent mourning, advancing the idea that the girls’mother has recently died.3 Meanwhile marigolds can represent obedience, sug-gesting the need or the young girls to grow up and assume some o the amilialresponsibilities vacated by the deceased mother. Tis line o interpretation can

perhaps be deduced rom the bunch o grapes held in the right hand o the oldestgirl and the pears held by middle child: ripening grapes (symbolizing matura-tion) coupled with pears (traditional symbols o women) could suggest the girl’sgrowth into adulthood, when they will assume the duties o wives and mothers.4 Indeed, the youngest girl holds a doll, which can be considered a didactic toolto teach young children uture social roles. Dolls are well-suited or imitative

play, through which young girls learn household responsibilities, and they wererequently employed in this capacity.5 Te girls on either end also wear braceletsmade o coral, a material ofen used in protective talismans.6

Figure I.1: Anonymous, Tree Young Girls (1627). Photo Credit: Denver Art Museum.



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Introduction: Te Early Modern Child in Art and History 3

Tis painting, then, reveals a host o concerns associated with pre-modern chil-dren. Recent scholarship on the child in history has contributed signicantlyto our understanding o early modern children and childhood, as this chapter

will discuss. Scholars have explored many child-related issues, including the legalrights o children, inanticide and exposure, parental attitudes toward children,kin networks, gender roles, education and expectations, passage into adulthoodand children’s domestic spaces. Early modern art is ull o depictions o children,rom princes and princesses to common street urchins, while cities containedchildren’s spaces both in the palace and in the piazza. Yet, art historical inquirytraditionally has ocused on studying images o children without deeper inves-tigation into the broader social meanings and unctions o these depictions.7 Te requent and varied representations o children in early modern art dem-onstrates the central role they played in society. Tis book examines how images

were employed to construct identity, explain conceptions o childhood, eluci-date parental expectations and teach children societal norms.

Philippe Ariès’s L’Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous l’Ancien Régime rom 1960 is widely and justiably considered the oundational work in the study o the childin history.8 Tis introductory chapter ocuses on Ariès because he is at the oun-dation o the study o children, but it does not advocate or his positions. Hisconclusions are irretrievably awed and, according to some authors, should be‘discarded’.9 Reerence to Ariès creates a common structure or inquiry, however,allowing this volume to more easily integrate with the wider body o literature

on the child in history. I have lled in this structure with the strategic selec-tions rom the vast scholarship on children; overall, the chapters in this bookoffer a solid summary o the art historical literature on children and childhood.Te book also makes a specic contribution: it ocuses attention on childhoodeducation and expectation across Europe, over a ew hundred years, and does soby examining a variety o media by which these ideas were communicated. Tissurvey is unied by our investigation into the investment parents made in edu-cating children to assume various social roles.

Te Early Modern Child in History

Beore Ariès’s seminal work, the study o the child in history was terra incog-nita.10 Ariès established that childhood is not merely a period o biologicaldevelopment, but is also a societal construct. As such, the study o children andchildhood can be a tool with which scholars can reconstruct past societies. Chil-dren also emerge as subject in and o themselves and, with them, conceptions ochildhood. Tis critical inquiry has added age to categories o critical inquiry,alongside race, gender and sexual orientation.11 Social studies o the Renaissancemust consider children to understand contemporary society: by one estimate



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in Italian cities, or example, perhaps up to hal o population was less than -teen years old.12 Tese numbers seem to hold true generally or Europe: HenryKamen puts the number o children between one-third and one-hal.13 Over thelast fy years, scholarship on the child in history has contributed signicantlyto our understanding o the early modern period, demonstrating the validityand ruitulness o Ariès’s approach, though modern scholarship rejects or atleast questions most o Ariès’s conclusions. Chie among his conclusions and,undamentally the most problematic, is the idea that there was no intellectualconcept o childhood in the Middle Ages and that this idea emerged only in theRenaissance. Tough it is now clear that there were ancient and Medieval uner-standings o childhood, new conceptions o childhood emerged and older onesevolved in the early modern period.

While contemplating questions about contemporary amilies in VichyFrance, Ariès looked at Medieval French painting and contended that these

works never really depicted children: there were no depictions o child-specicclothing, ood, objects or space. Ariès stated matter-o-actly that, ‘Medieval artuntil about the twelfh century did not know childhood or did not attempt to

portray it’.14 Children appeared in Medieval art but, as with homunculus imageso Jesus, children were portrayed as miniature adults because artists and audi-ences had no conception o childhood and, thereore, would not have been ableto understand a childlike Jesus. In short, ‘there was not place or childhood inthe Medieval world’.15 Airès argues that ‘ … the men o the tenth and eleventh

centuries did not dwell on the image o childhood, and that the images had nei-ther interest nor even reality or them. It suggests too that in the realm o reallie, not simply in that o aesthetic transposition, childhood was a period o tran-sition which passed quickly and which was just as quickly orgotten’. 16 Instead,Airès claims, beore age seven, kids were considered mini-adults and afer that,they were simply adults who assumed labor activities or other social roles.17 Tisbegan to change with the dawn o the Renaissance, and the transormation waslargely complete by the seventeenth century. Beginning at this time, well-bornamilies became more interested in companionate marriage, amily and the wellbeing o children. Te child assumed a more central role in the amily’s con-cern and, critically, a role that was o the same importance as any other amilialconcern. Ariès argued that parents had always loved their children, but this was

now coupled with concern or how to raise the child which, in turn, resulted innew and better education. Depictions o children begin to change afer 1600,reecting this conceptual change: children were now shown as individuals, withchildlike eatures, holding children’s objects, and engaged in children-specicbehaviors. As a key example, Airès notes that, ‘[n]othing in Medieval dressdistinguished the child rom the adult’ but that, in the seventeenth century,middle- and upper-class children ‘ceased to be dressed like the grown-up’.18 As



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with clothing, Ariès ails to nd in the Middle Ages children’s toys or games,things that emerge only in the seventeenth century.19 Ariès also nds evidence oan emerging awareness o the concept o childhood in humor: beore the earlymodern period, children were treated like adults and could be witnesses to crudesexual humor, something that is among the strictest o taboos today.20 No oneat that time, other than prudish moralists, would have thought anything o it.Hence, there was no concern over images, or example, o urinating children oradults ondling genitalia.21 Later, however, society came to believe that childrenmust be protected rom such inappropriate things, and that there is a wholerealm o adult knowledge and activity rom which children must be protecteduntil they are older. Tis demonstrates the notion o children as ‘innocents’, aconception that both contributes to a denition o childhood, as well as marks achange rom Medieval attitudes towards young people.

One o Ariès’s undamental arguments, and to many readers the most shock-ing and contentious, is that because o the ever-present specter o childhooddeath, Medieval parents invested little emotionally, economically, or otherwisein their children. As Ariès says, ‘People could not allow themselves to becometoo attached to something that was regarded as a probable loss’.22 Ariès pre-sents anecdotal observations to argue or this lack o parental attachment: orexample, Ariès uncritically cites Montaigne’s essay ‘On the affection o athersor their children’ (Book 2) in which the essayist says, ‘I have lost two or threechildren in their inancy, not without regret, but without great sorrow’.23 Death

did indeed stalk: estimates place childhood mortality rates in the pre-modern period between 20 per cent and 50 per cent.24 20–25 per cent mortality was thenorm beore the rst birthday.25 For comparison, in underdeveloped and devel-oping countries today the rate is about 10 per cent and less than 1 per cent indeveloped countries. Beyond the birthing process itsel, without antibiotics and

vaccines, children were subject to inections and viruses and, later, illnesses andaccident. Tere were demographic variables that impacted mortality: death rates

were lower among the wealthy and boys survived more than girls in all socio-economic classes.26 Improvements in childhood mortality and health begin inthe early modern period due to improvements in nutrition and various publicmeasures, a change that reects increasing societal investment in children.27

Ariès’s impression o childhood beore the seventeenth century was that

it was not a happy age; parents could be distant or abusive and even abandonor kill their own children. Newborn inants aced inanticide and exposure. InImperial Rome, exposure rates ran between 20–40 per cent and, while this prac-tice ofen led to death, it cannot be considered the same thing as inanticide. 28 Indeed, the requency o exposure made it a recognized social phenomenon

with a resulting reciprocal practice– aliena misericordia, which saw childrentaken in by surrogate households. Tough the kindness o strangers could not



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be guaranteed in every exposure event, it still offered the possibility o survival, whereas inanticide simply meant death.29 Still, upwards o 90 per cent o aban-donments resulted in death beore the rst birthday.30 Te great turning pointin combating death by abandonment was likely the emergence o oundlinghospitals in twelfh-century Italy, which increased the likelihood o survival overmore haphazard abandonments outside public buildings, open urban spaces andchurches.31 Te appearance o oundling hospitals and orphanages is a clear indi-cator that concern or children transcended the parental realm and became animportant civic priority.32 Orphanages and other such institutions perhaps ben-etted girls more than boys, as girls were more likely to be abandoned to oundinghospitals.33 Late in the early modern period, illegitimacy was the prime cause oabandonment; in eighteenth-century Paris, upwards o 90 per cent o abandon-ments were due to illegitimacy.34 Other causes o abandonment include nancialhardship, the death o the mother or both parents, or the presence o a disability.35 Orphanages and similar institutions also played key roles in protecting children,

potentially limiting their roles as perpetrators or victims o crime.36 Despite theinstances o abandonment, or the most part children were raised in amilies.37

Initially, other scholars built on Aries’ notion that childhood was a nega-tive time and that it was only recently that parents began to nurture and showaffection towards their offspring. Lloyd deMause, or example, asserts that‘[t]he history o childhood is a nightmare rom which we have only begun toawaken’, and argued that childhood was a period o beatings, abandonment,

murder and sexual abuse.38

Edward Shorter declared that, ‘mothers viewed thedevelopment and happiness o inants younger than two with indifference’.39 Heurther argued that this dark childhood ended only around 1750, perhaps withthe Romantic movement. Te rise o romantic love between parents was seen asa necessary precondition or parental love o children. Such adult love in mar-riage was not common until the eighteenth century, when the phenomenon oarranged marriages began to wane. Lawrence Stone argued that doting parentscan be seen as early as the feenth century, but true parental affection or chil-dren is not achieved until the industrial period, a phenomenon that coincides

with a sharp decrease in childhood mortality rates.40 Elisabeth Badinter also sees parental affection appearing in the nineteenth century, but argues that industri-alism orced athers out o the home, allowing or the creation o an environment

conducive to making women mothers and homemakers.41 In the 1980s, however, a more positive view o pre-modern childhoodemerged in scholarly literature. Simon Schama sees care or children in the sev-enteenth century: in the Dutch Republic, medical and pedagogical books or

parents taught mothers to give love, engage in play, provide toys, ensure edu-cation and provide or nancial utures.42 Linda Pollock argued that parentalinvestment in children can be seen in diaries and letters as early as the late Mid-



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alizations o childhood. Children’s urniture, or example, existed prior to themodern period and what makes a piece o urniture child-specic is not just amatter scale. Rather, urniture such as cribs and high chairs reect concerns withsaety, discipline, hygiene and play.55 Moreover, the possession o this age-spe-cic urniture in a household indicates and displays amilial social status. Evenin seventeenth-century Rome, where a child-centric material culture did notdevelop, there are surviving inventories that give an idea o the range o urnitureelite amilies bought or children.56 Like urniture, toys indicate the presence ochildren and parental response to children. Dolls, or example, are the oldestand most ubiquitous toy. Tey are ound in almost all cultures and date backamongst the earliest artiacts. Dolls are or imitative play and the way children

play with them ofen mirrors what they see in the home. Similarly, dolls could beused to teach expectations, as we have seen in the Portrait of Tree Young Girls.In some cases, dolls could even be used or religious instruction.57 Children havecertainly always played, but play does require two things: space and opportunity,both o which are more abundant or elite amilies. Play can also involve objects(either specially purposed or spontaneously used), but they are not required.Play with specically crafed objects can, thereore, also reect economic stand-ing. It is also subject to moral discourse; some thinkers, such as Augustine, havedened it as rivolous and sinul, and ound no value in it. On the other hand, inBook III o Te Republic , Plato saw play (especially imitative play) as an antici-

patory orm o socialization and thereore quite important.58 Following Plato’s

lead, Locke and Rousseau ultimately argued that one can teach through play. Te lack o children’s objects in Ariès’s sample might reect the lack o worldly goods generally in the Medieval world, goods which, according to someauthors, prolierate beginning only in the Renaissance.59 By the seventeenth cen-tury, in the Dutch Republic, consumers had relatively easy access to newspapers,books, wool cloth, beer, herrings, cheese, salt, tobacco, coffee, cauliower andeven exotic owers, like chrysanthemums. Earlier in the feenth century, theSpanish traveler Pero aur visited Bruges and described nding there:

oranges and lemons rom Castile, which seemed only just to have been gathered romthe trees, ruits and wine rom Greece, as abundant as in that country. I saw alsoconections and spices rom Alexandria and the Levant, just as i one were there; ursrom the Black Sea, as i they had been produced in the district. Here was all Italy

with its brocades, silks, and armour and everything which is made there; and indeedthere is no part o the world whose products are not ound here at their best.60

Works o art themselves emerge as luxury goods in the Renaissance; WilriedBrulez calculated that some 17 million paints were executed in Europe between1400 and 1800.61 Some estimates put the production o paintings at 2.5 millionin the Dutch Republic alone by 1650, while others radically increase this number



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to 5–10 million paintings.62 Tis booming new market in painting supplied thedemands o middle and upper class consumers, and even some rom the work-ing class. Troughout Europe in the seventeenth century, and particularly in thenorth, subjects like portraits, landscapes, genre scenes and domestic interiorsappear with great popularity alongside religious, history and morality paintings.Portraits o children emerge as good subjects or mercantile amilies in the seven-teenth century, and the genre evolved.63 As children appeared more and more inart, so too did their possessions and the wealthier the amily, the more they couldafford non-essential, child-specic items, such as toys, clothes and urniture.

While art related to children is overt and abundant in the seventeenthcentury, even a cursory (though more substantial than Ariès’s) survey nds child-centric art much earlier. Stephanie R. Miller demonstrates that in the wake o the‘children’s plague’ o 1363–4 a much deeper appreciation or children emergedin Florence and this can be seen in ‘treatise and records, and in images relatedto childhood that ornament the city and appear within the home in increasingnumbers over the course o the century’.64 Tere was a veritable ‘prolieration’ obirth objects, such as deschi da parto (birth trays).65 Tere was also a wide rangeo child-specic artiacts in feenth-century Florentine homes, including cra-dles, teethers, rattles, dishes, chests and educational toys.66 Protective talismansand amulets appear in abundance and some are even exclusively or children.67

Most importantly, a more nuanced interpretation o objects and imagesthan Ariès offers, demonstrates an earlier concern or children even in the kinds

o objects Ariès discusses. For example, Ariès identies at least three ‘types’ ochildren that appear in Medieval art and argues that, rather than being truechildren, they are stand-ins or other things. Tese images, he argues, do notseek to portray real children and are thus evidence that there was no theoreticalconception o childhood in the Middle Ages.68 It is true that well into the earlymodern period, children continue to be used as indicators o other concepts, likethe child beggars as symbols o charity in the painting o Le Nain, Ribera andMurillo.69 Tese images, however, were multivalent; the audience o these workso art likely understood more than one message. One type o child that Arièsidenties is the ‘adolescent angel’. We see such gures in the relie panels o Lucadella Robbia’s Cantoria, an organ well in the Cathedral o Florence. In the relies,adolescent boys and girls sing, dance, and play musical instruments. However,

the children stand on clouds and so, by one reading, they are to be consideredangels (g. I.2). Another reading is also likely, however: Luca incorporated real-lie human elements, such as the childish interaction among the players, or a ootlifed to keep time, underscoring the childlike character o the gure. 70 Moreo-

ver, we know that Luca used Florentine youths as models.71 Finally, while thecarved gures may have been angels, children (boys, in particular) would still



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have sung in the cathedral.72 All o this makes it impossible to think that con-temporary audiences, as well as the artist, necessarily divorced the images ochildren in the Cantoria rom actual children. Another example concerns theiconography o the biblical gure o David in Florence. Te biblical gure oDavid certainly communicated Florentine civic values, but these images alsocommunicated parental and amilial concerns.73 Meanwhile, paintings mayappear in Renaissance homes that do not specically display ‘real’ children,but were in act made or children. Parents in Renaissance Italy were encour-aged to have images o saintly children and virgins because they set positiveexamples or children.74 Later images o children seemed to be more or parentsthan or children.75 Finally, a child-centric image might have been clear to acontemporary audience but utterly lost to us today. Chiara Franceschini, orexample, argues that Michelangelo’s amed Doni ondo is, in part, a medita-tion on the souls o inants in Limbo.76 Indeed, tondi in general (ofen givenat marriage or at the birth o a child and nearly ubiquitous in the Renaissance

palazzo and casa) attest to the centrality o children in the hopes and aspira-tions o the Florentine amily. Tough outside the chronological scope o this

volume, Nancy Rose Marshall’s excellent discussion in City of Gold and Mud odepictions o Victorian-era children demonstrates that earlier images demandsustained analysis as they ofen convey ar more inormation than meets themodern eye.77



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Figure I.2: Luca della Robbia, Boys Singing fom a Book (early 1430s). Photo Credit: Matthew Knox Averett, author.

Over hal o Ariès’s book discusses education. Early modern art requentlyaddressed the education o chikdren, and this volume pays particular atten-tion to this subject. Education represents a signicant investment in children,by both parents and societies. Te study o both ormal and inormal educa-tion helps reveal what people wanted or their children, as well as what theyexpected their children to do as adults. A key point in Ariès substantial look at

the development o education rom the Middle Ages to the nineteenth centuryis that, in the Middle Ages, there was complete ‘indifference’ toward the age othe student.78 Students, regardless o age were mingled and, moreover, once theyentered school they entered a world o adults, not an institution designed toshepherd the young into adulthood as we ofen view it today. Ariès concludesthat in the Renaissance, however, education became something or children,



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suggesting a new conceptualization o childhood among early modern adults:all post-Medieval pedagogies are based on a recognition o ‘the special natureo childhood, and the moral and social importance o the systematic educationo children in special institutions devised or that purpose’.79 Beginning in thefeenth century, education changes dramatically: new curricula are introduced,children stay in school longer and education is entrusted to specialists.

A panel rom Peter Paul Rubens’ Medici Cycle illustrates the education oMaria de’ Medici and demonstrates both what should be taught and why (Fig.I.3). Maria commissioned Rubens to make a series o twenty-our paintingsthat would put orth her case or why she should be monarch o France rather

than her son, Louis XIII. Some o the panels promote the idea o a divine willthat avours Maria over Louis, while others assert her legal rights. Still otherstout her diplomatic successes as queen regent. Only one panel directly arguesor her qualications, Te Education of the Princess, the third panel in the cycle.In it, we see Maria attentively reading rom a book placed in the lap o Athena,

who teaches the young student wisdom. Above Maria is Hermes, messengero the gods, who here symbolizes Maria’s mastery o languages, an essentialskill in international politics. o the lef o the painting is Apollo playing acello and teaching Maria music and mathematics, while to the right Aglaea,Euphrosyne and Talia, offer a oral headdress to ensure the uture queen willgrow in grace. Te various objects surrounding the young girl demonstrate themultiple elds o inquiry to which an educated person should be exposed:

a bust o Homer indicating literature and philosophy, a palette, paint, andbrushes or the visual arts. All o this is required or a solid (elite male) educa-tion and a solid education is required to be a ruler.



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Figure I.3: Peter Paul Rubens, Te Education o the Princess Maria de’ Medici (1622–5).Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Such an image o education seems at odds with the received impression o Medi-

eval education. In the Middle Ages, a good bit o elite male education ocused onchivalric and martial arts, and this survived into the Renaissance.80 Yet it survivedlargely as ceremony, as a literary education became essential. o that end, ormalinstitutions o learning evolved or emerged in response to the dramatic changeso the Renaissance. At the outset o the early modern period, there were severalcompeting kinds o schools: or example, in most Italian cities between 1300and 1600, there was a mixture o independent, church and communal schools.81 Schools could be in competition, particularly over curricula. A spate o newhumanists issued writing on education that emphasized knowledge o Greek andRoman history, drawing and painting, reading, literature, and music. Languages

were deemed essential and Latin was given the most attention, though some stu-dents also learned Greek. Trough the feenth century, the studia humanitatis

was established, with the goal to educate the perect orator, which combinedimpeccable speaking skills with an excellence o character. Vernacular schools

persisted, providing basic instruction generally to both boys and girls in reading, writing and arithmetic. With the emergence o schools run by religious orders inthe sixteenth century, these traditions continued (with the Jesuits, or example,continuing the studia humanitatis and the Priarists maintaining the vernacular).Similarly, exposure to the visual arts was considered essential to elite education. As



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early as the sixteenth century, Baldassare Castiglione, in Il Cortegiano, matter-o-actly emphasizes the importance o knowledge o art or both men and women.82

Tese dramatic developments indicate that children’s social roles werechanging. Tey also illustrate varying conceptualizations o childhood and thecharacter o children. While the notion o the child as innocent did appear, asAriès notes, so did a competing image: that o the evil child.83 Tis was particu-larly true or girls. Some early modern educators viewed the relationship betweenchildren and parents as ‘war’ in which the will o the child had to be broken.84 Only then would a child behave in appropriate ways, thus ullling social expec-tations. Physical and psychological coercion were the norm in efforts to controlchildren’s behavior. In the early sixteenth century, Erasmus o Rotterdam arguedin his treatise ‘Declamation on the Subject o Early Liberal Education or Chil-dren’ ( De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis declamatio, 1529) that parentsshould invest time and money into ensuring children (or more specically boys)received a good humanistic education.85 Like Augustine, Erasmus believed thatchildren are marked with original sin and thus are not born innocent. Educa-tion, however, was a path to moral cleanliness and was critical in establishing adesirable society. Erasmus prescribed not just a curriculum based in the studyo languages, arts and mathematics, but also called or teachers who wouldact as athers towards their students. eachers would thus be rm, but gentle;Erasmus was ‘obsessed’ with stories o severe physical abuse and, ollowing thelead o Quintilian, argued against corporal punishment.86 In 1693, John Locke

published Some Toughts Concerning Education, a treatise on the education ogentlemen. Expanding on his notion o a tabula rasa, rst put orth in EssayConcerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke argued that, contra Augustineand Erasmus, people were not born sinul, but were rather blank slates. Chil-dren thus could grow into rational beings but only through a proper educationthat would drive away prejudice and superstition. Wisdom and virtue were themost important goal o an education, even above raw knowledge. Locke arguedor spartan conditions, but condemned corporal punishment. Tough others inEngland had similarly argued or curricular reorm, it was Locke’s treatise thatreached a wide audience and would dominate English educational thought orthe next century. Eighteenth-century France, meanwhile, embraced Jean-JacquesRousseau’s treatise on education Émile, ou De l’éducation (1762). Rousseau pre-

sented a new conceptualization o the childhood, dening it as an inherentlygood and pure state and the child as physically, morally and intellectually vulner-able. Tis vulnerability required nurturing and education available only rom aloving amily. Like Locke, Rousseau ound children to be valuable people, indeedthe uture o society. He rejected authoritarian education and sought an educa-tional system that incorporated children’s points o view. In theory, the goal oeducation was to teach boys to lead virtuous lives in a society that was otherwise



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Figure I.4: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, A Young Girl Reading . Photo Credit: NationalGallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Even or the poor, education was deemed vitally important, though it was di-

erent rom elite educations. Schools were still mostly or the wealthy as they were expensive and, consequently, only about 10 per cent o the populationattended.99 Still, that parents would pay is urther evidence o investment inchildren. Most Jesuit schools, such as the Collegio Romano, did not charge ees,but male youths who wished to attend these schools (normally beginning at ageten) had to have had some education in Latin beore matriculation, thus effec-tively barring poorer boys.100 Overall, education or the poor was largely limitedto religious instruction.101 Most everyone, however, was taught basic literacy,as reading and writing were considered essential or potentially securing good

jobs in emerging bureaucracies, as well as preparing children to deal with therules o lie that were increasing printed.102 In Germany, rom at least Lutheron, society increasingly saw rearing and educating children as an adult's bind-ing duty, as children were uture citizens.103 Tus, despite the costs o education,Protestant cities in the north led the charge or compulsory education.104 Wei-mar in 1619, or example, began requiring education or all children betweenthe ages o six and twelve.105 Later, education was made compulsory everyoneacross Enlightenment Prussia by Frederick the Great.106 Frederick's Generalland-

schulreglement rom 1763 is a model o modern compulsory education, calling



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or education at least until the age o 14 and prescribing a common curriculumand textbooks.107 Tere were also various kinds o inormal education: educationcould also be ound in apprenticeships, which could take place in workshop or inroyal courts.108 For poorer amilies, children might help on the arm, around thehouse or in a workshop by age seven, but begin actual training around ten.109 Fornon-elite girls, education ofen ocused on sewing , cooking and other householdchores, with reading limited to spiritual books, like the lives o the saints.110

Te Early Modern Child in Art

Tis volume contributes art historical examinations o the early modern child.

Most o the essays this volume contains originated as papers delivered at aca-demic conerences, while a ew were solicited to round-out the book. For variousreasons, not all the conerence participants could contribute and the very natureo an enterprise like this can be idiosyncratic, leaving out an array o importanttopics, including children’s objects and spaces. Te study o the early modernchild, thus, will continue to be rich or uture study. Still, the ten essays in this

volume cover a vast collection o art and a broad body o topics. Altogether,the book examines the construction o identity, explores childhood educations,expands on children’s participation in government and religious activities, andhelps dene childhood and parental roles. Te accumulation o evidence pre-sented in the book argues that early modern adults (including parents, clergy,

princes and philosophers) consciously developed notions o childhood and

actively constructed childhood identity. Our survey begins with Margaret Eliza-beth Hadley’s essay, which examines a feenth-century illustrated prayer bookthat demonstrates that early modern parents deeply mourned the passing otheir children. Te book was commissioned by Macé Prestesaille, a recent wid-ower, and depictions o his deceased children in the book visually assert theircontinued growth afer death. Prestesaille wished to envision the entire amilyreunited as though neither his wie, Jehanne, nor any o their children had died.Although the teachings o the church are relevant and the specic texts includedin Macé’s book help provide immediate interpretive context, one parent’s crea-tive and personal work o mourning is paramount or analyzing this case. Furtherdemonstrating adult affection or children, anya iffany describes the unusualcase o Sor Margarita de la Cruz, daughter o Holy Roman Emperor MaximilianII, who, though childless, placed children at the centre o her lie and religiousrituals. Sor Margarita’s love o children was a direct unction o her reverenceor Christ’s humanity. When describing her religious practice, the nun herselcontended that the sight o real babies and the sounds o their cries helped herto ‘remember’ Christ in the manger.



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Our next section ocuses on children and violence. Children were victimso violence, but could also be perpetrators. As Margaret Flansburg observes,small children and young boys began to appear with requency in late recentoand early Quattrocento Calvary scenes as observers o Jesus’s humiliation andsuffering. Teir poses are drawn rom the 1293 Supplicationes varie, which wasan important reerence or several centuries. In the Supplicationes, some o thechildren collect rocks in their tunic skirts or carry pails o stones with whichto attack Jesus. In the Riminese School, however, similar children appear to behesitant and watchul rather than aggressive, perhaps demonstrating empathytowards Jesus’s suffering. Rachel Chantos, meanwhile, looks at the humor, morallessons and social instruction o violent children in World Upside Down prints.Tese prints typically eature scenes o peasant lie and inversions displayinganimals and men, men and women, and children and their parents, with thesubjects ofen deriving rom olk tales. In particular, Chantos notes scenes in

which boys beat their athers, revealing an alternate and undesirable reality – areality ofen eatured in early olk tales – and both were used to teach a moral,cope with hierarchic anxieties and relate to the civilizing process.

Te third section looks at paintings o children as means o expressing con-ceptions o childhood. Jasmin Cyril notes that late Quattrocento and earlyCinquecento portraits o Renaissance court amily lie underscored the signi-cance o the dynastic legacy o the amily, implicit in the heraldry and placemento images o privileged children, and introduced an element o amilial association

that determined the uture o the court itsel. She traces the tradition rom ancientsources and documents its ull owering in the Italian courts o the Renaissance.Teir presence emphasizes the importance o children in establishing aristo-cratic dynasties. Fabien Lacouture analyzes depictions o young boys, identiyingthree kinds o works o art that correspond to three traditional Italian divisionso childhood. Deschi da parto, with their prominent displays o inantile penises,correspond to infanzia. Later in lie, double portraits o athers and sons depicts

puerizia. And nally, individual portraits o older boys suggests adolescenza. Teinclusion in these images o various attributes, rom weapons to books, asserts themasculinity o male children o noble extraction, emphasizing the perpetuation othe amily. Leaving Italy, Parme Giuntini demonstrates that the visual culture oearly modern childhood in eighteenth-century England was orchestrated in por-

traits and ancy pictures painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds and exhibited at the newlyounded Royal Academy. Many o these images gained even greater visibility andthus inuence when they were reproduced as widely-distributed prints. At the

precise moment that physicians and philosophers were exhorting the British aris-tocracy to revise dramatically their parenting practices, Reynolds was capitalizingon his position as President o the Royal Academy, and his reputation as a portrait

painter, to re-envision the landscape o childhood. In all o these paintings, one o



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Figure I.5: Te author’s children with a Cantoria relief panel by Luca della Robbia atthe High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo Credit:

Matthew Knox Averett, author.


Introduction to the Early Modern Child in Art and History

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