Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

This work, produced by Florentine painter Domenico di Michelino (1417-91), was commissioned by the city of Florence and its silk guild for the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a charitable institution providing shelter and care to orphans and foundling children. The Madonna degli Innocenti follows an archetypal model of the Madonna of Mercy which was a popular subject for Italian artists throughout the 15th century. Here under the cloak draped over her outstretched arms, the children of the hospital seek protection from the Virgin and the charitable institution she represents. These supplicants are divided into three age groups distinguished by their dress and size. The youngest, at the lowest level are swaddled tightly in white cloth according to their ability to stand. The intermediate group are dressed in short, white tunics, their hands holding up the youngest boys. One child grasps Mary's dress and looks upward toward her face. The eldest children, indicated by their black garb with the swaddled infant insignia of the Ospedale, mostly clasp their hands in prayer and look reverently upward. All are clothed in decent garments, not rags, and are well-nourished. These children, while ostensibly without parents, live comfortably thanks to the intercession and protection of the Mother of Mercy.

The scene takes place before the portico of the hospital, a well-known architectural monument designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and completed in 1426. The arcade of rounded arches draws on the heritage of classical antiquity to confer a gravitas to the institution and its work. The roundels shown in the painting as empty were filled in 1487 with terracotta figures of swaddled infants made by Andrea della Robbia. The Ospedale was founded by the Prato merchant, Francesco Datini, with his legacy of one thousand florins in 1419. In his will he wrote: "...in order to increase the alms and devotions of citizens, rural dwellers, and others who have compassion for the boys and girls called 'throwaways' and so that these little children shall be well fed, educated and disciplined.” (Gavitt, 1990, p. 52) Though Datini and his wife raised his daughter, Ginevra, whose mother was an enslaved woman, he had no male heirs to inherit. He arranged instead to have his business enterprises dissolved in order to fund his charitable bequests. Datini in point of fact bequeathed his money for foundlings to the Florentine hospital, Santa Maria Nuova. The amount by itself was not sufficient to build a new hospital, but authorities at Santa Maria Nuova did nothing with the funds for ten years. Members of the Florentine silk guild, a powerful and well-financed group, then intervened with the Commune of Prato to take over the project.

In January 1445, the Ospedale opened its doors for business. taking in foundlings and orphans. Three years later the administrators reported that they had more than 260 infants placed with wet nurses in the countryside and the numbers were increasing daily. While girls rather than boys were more likely to be abandoned at the Ospedale (1445-1466), their survival rates were generally lower than those of male infants. Hospital officials had to check on wet nurses regularly and records document frequent cases of inadequate care and infant deaths. When children reached the age of weaning, they went to live with foster parents. Around the age of four they returned to the Ospedale for further care and education. Some were reclaimed by a parent or adopted, while the rest, often by the age of seven or eight, were put to work, boys in apprenticeships and girls as servants or weavers. Girls received a small dowry, indicating the priority the Ospedale placed on the creation of new families and a reinforcement of the city’s population following waves of plague.

Recent scholarship suggests that the painting may have been carried in public processions accompanied by children from the institution. In this way Florentines would connect the care of young children with the Ospedale, represented by its signature architecture. Agostino di Porto described this during a celebration of Saint John the Baptist in the city in the early 1450s:
After I had been there a while, the procession started to move past. The first thing
was the three [foundling] hospitals, and each one had its cross and banner: the
first was San Gallo, and the second was the Scala, and the third was the Innocenti.
First came the cross, then many loads of tiny children in big baskets covered all
over with flowers and they all had garlands on their heads. Each of these hospitals
had many loads and behind them, two by two, came all the wet nurses, and it was
a devout and moving sight. Behind them followed the friars of each hospital with
their rectors and priests and relics and other adornments. (Presciutti, p. 32)
Furthermore, in the painting the love and compassion shown by the Virgin Mary, with both arms outstretched, was a promise of salvation not only to the foundlings but also to all those who supported the work of the Ospedale. The older children engaged in prayer reminded viewers of the benefits of those prayers on their behalf coming from young innocents under the protection of the Virgin.