Divine drawings and godly mothers: Raphael’s study of a Seated Woman with Child and verses on maiolica plates from Deruta

Abstract

The silverpoint drawing of A Seated Woman Reading with Child (c.1512–13) at Chatsworth seems to be Raphael’s final word in his rethinking of the composition that would integrate a female figure with her child and a book. While the mother focuses her gaze on a book, the child’s upper body is twisted towards the viewer. This group certainly has a domestic quality to it, while it also formally partakes in compositions depicting the Virgin reading with Christ Child. This article suggests that it was this association between the domestic and the religious scene that Raphael wished to devise for printmaking purposes. Once engraved, the composition could circulate both as a print and as a design on maiolica piatti da pompa destined to decorate elite Italian Renaissance homes. Raphael developed a powerful and an intimate scene suitable to accompany various moralizing texts on these ornate, lustred plates. Both the image and the text guided young mothers in their daily activities and assisted the process of self-fashioning enabled by the ambiguity of Raphael’s design and written phrases, which allowed a more universal interpretation of the figures.