Desco da parto

: deschi da parto) was an important symbolic gift on the occasion of a successful birth in late medieval and Early Modern Florence and Siena.

No fixed term of lying-in is recommended in Renaissance manuals on family life (unlike in some other cultures, see Postpartum confinement), but it appears from documentary records that the mother was rarely present at the baptism, in Italian cities usually held within a week of the birth at the local parish church, normally a few minutes' walk from any house.

[5] The tray or salver, often covered with a protective cloth, was used for serving delicacies to the visitors, perhaps including some they had brought as presents: a maid brings a cloth-covered desco with two carafes of water and wine to fortify Saint Anne in Paolo Uccello's fresco of the Birth of the Virgin (1436), in the Chapel of the Annunciation, Duomo of Prato,[6] Raiment might be ceremoniously brought into the specially-decorated bedchamber where the new mother lay: in a desco da parto by Masaccio of 1427,[7] the tray and a covered cup are preceded by a pair of trumpeters flying banners with the Florentine gigli.

[8] In all these the mother sits up in bed receiving gifts from a stream of female visitors, while at the front of the scene the child is washed or wrapped in swaddling by more women.

The earliest painted illustration of a novella of Boccaccio is on a Florentine desco da parto with the arms of a Pisan family, made c. 1410 and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The underside or verso generally has a simpler and often less elevated subject, with fewer, larger figures, and usually includes heraldry, with the arms of both parents shown.

Manuals advised keeping images with a positive impact in the sight of pregnant women, and it is in this context that the recurrent naked boys, and the scenes showing the end of a successful childbirth, should be seen.

As the 15th century continued they were gradually replaced as gifts by pieces of majolica, often special "birthing sets" with similar iconography, although the Uffizi has an example of 1524 by Jacopo Pontormo, and others are even later.

Jacqueline Marie Musacchio rejects the common assumption that these trays were made to celebrate a marriage; she never encountered a desco da nozze in any 15th-century inventory.

[20] But a Sienese wedding casket (cofanetto nuziale) in wood in the Louvre has a round top with a Triumph of Venus by Giovanni di Paolo (dated 1421) that is effectively identical to the desci form.

Other types of secular Italian Renaissance art designed for female tastes are the marriage caskets made by the Embriachi workshop and others, and the Otto prints for lids and covers of boxes.

Diana, goddess of hunting appears in the foreground clothed in a dark, brocaded robe and carrying a falcon; at the right, her nymphs pursue a boar.