Christ as a Maternal Figure: Motherly Depictions of the Son in the Met Cloisters

Authors

• Cheynie Wray

Keywords

Christ as Mother, medieval Christian art, maternal symbolism

Abstract

The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, Queen of France is a miniature book of hours—an illuminated, or illustrated, prayer book—made for its namesake, a queen of France. Crafted by the hand of French artist Jean Pucelle between 1324 and 1328, it is now held in the Treasury of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Cloisters Collection), one of the most renowned repositories of medieval art in the United States. The book pairs scenes of the Passion of Christ with scenes of the life of the Virgin. One such pairing shows the Betrayal of Christ and the Annunciation. On the Betrayal of Christ page, Christ is depicted with a distended abdomen that makes him appear, rather startlingly, like a pregnant woman. A swollen stomach is frequently and somewhat arbitrarily found in medieval and Renaissance art; however, given the surrounding context, in this piece the stomach of Christ is significant enough to bear further discussion.

Recommended Citation

Wray, Cheynie (2026) "Christ as a Maternal Figure: Motherly Depictions of the Son in the Met Cloisters," AWE (A Woman’s Experience): Vol. 12, Article 18.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/awe/vol12/iss1/18