Delight in Painted Companions: Shaping the Soul from Birth in Early Modern Italy

This essay explores the production of numerous relatively cheap, small-scale religious paintings of Leonardesque inspiration, which depict episodes from the infancy of Christ and St John the Baptist. Early modern devotional literature was deeply concerned with infancy, recommending that a child’s religious education begin in their earliest years when their soul was especially malleable. Medical beliefs taught that children were naturally inclined towards sensual pleasure, and pedagogues advised that their moral instruction ought to be enjoyable. Visual images were thought to be particularly appealing, and in combination with the idea that works of art could access the soul with greater immediacy than the written word, these discourses can be seen to have driven the market in iconographies that were pleasing to children. Paintings representing the encounter between Christ and his cousin in a joyful and ‘childish’ way provided a focus for the youngest members of the household, stimulating pleasure, recognition and positive spiritual development. Such images were generally small-scale and widely available, and this study therefore provides new insight into the religious concerns of those lower down the social scale.