BARTOLOMEO DI FRUOSINO
(b. ca. 1366, Firenze, d. 1441, Firenze)

Desco da parto (verso)

1428
Tempera on panel, diameter 59 cm
New York Historical Society, New York

The custom of presenting expensive gift to a new mother on the occasion of giving birth was widespread among the upper middle classes in renaissance Tuscany. Commonly these gifts took the form of either a five-piece maiolica set (including a broth bowl and cover, drinking cup, saltcellar, and lid) or a painted 'desco da parto' (tray, both of which were luxury imitations of functional objects, intended for presentation and display only. The imagery adapted for these objects was invariably secular, generally literary or mythological in source, frequently aristocratic or courtly in content, sometimes emblematic or moralising in theme. Occasionally, as in this case or in that of a celebrated tray by Masaccio, the trays are painted reportage, with the birth scene itself figured on the recto, enacted in contemporary interior by figures in contemporary dress; they function as precious documents of the social habits of the age.

The birth scene on the recto of this tray is a faithful copy of a drawing by Lorenzo Monaco representing the Birth and naming of St John the Baptist. Another drawing by Lorenzo Monaco may be presumed to lie behind the design of the verso representing a naked child seated on a rock in the middle of a stream or lake, urinating.