Breastfeeding

Room 4, Vitrine 21

• Breastfeeding is a manifestation of a woman’s ability to nurture. In the art of ancient Peru, many works depict women breastfeeding, with the infant holding the mother while being fed.
• In one of these pieces, identifiable by his serpent ear adornments, the mythological Moche hero Ai Apaec is being breastfed as an infant by a “cacao mother”. To this day in Peru, the properties of the cacao husk are known for their ability to increase the production of breastmilk, and its consumption is encouraged.
• Scenes depicting divine mothers breastfeeding their children are found in many cultures. Christian art also inherited this tradition. Mary, while not herself acknowledged as divine, assumes the presence and significance of all the goddesses who preceded her: Egypt’s Isis, Sumer’s Inanna, Greece’s Aphrodite, and Rome’s Cybele. Like those earlier figures, she gives birth to and nurtures a semi-divine being who dies only to be reborn.
• Cupisnique culture, Formative Epoch (1250 BC – 1 AD), ML040342.
• Moche culture, Florescent Epoch (1 AD – 800 AD), ML001306, ML007314, ML012845.
• Recuay culture, Florescent Epoch (1 AD – 800 AD), ML040415.
• Lambayeque culture, Fusion Epoch (800 AD – 1300 AD), ML017985.
• Nursing Madonna, Cusco School painting, 18th century.

ML017985, ML040342 y Virgen de la Leche

ML017985, ML040342 y Virgen de la Leche