Birth and Renaissance in Florence

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Advances in obstetrics have changed our lifestyles. The danger that the birth once represented for both mother and child is now thankfully forgotten.

To acknowledge the success of a birth, the Renaissance Florentines had the nice practice to offer to the mother a desco da parto. This wooden tablet, round or polygonal, was used for the presentation of food. Those of the aristocracy are painted on both sides.

The copy for sale by Dobiaschofsky in Bern on November 11 is a tempera, in accordance with the best art technique of that time. It is a dodecagon of 53 cm in diameter and 2.7 cm thick made between 1400 and 1430.

The themes are perfectly suited to the subject, since the face side shows a garden of love and the back a young boy with a goose. This rare memory of the life in the Renaissance period is estimated 90 KCHF.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Unsold. I make my usual comment for such a case : too atypical! Too bad.