Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, 1999, Hard Cover, NF

Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999. 

English, First Edition, Near Fine, Hard Cover, 4to, 9” x 11 ½”, 212 pp.

ISBN: 0300076290

Red woven cloth over boards with gilt stamped titling to spine, full-color floral image to pastedowns and endpapers, in publisher’s black dust jacket with full-color details of art to front and back, white text to front, spine, and back. Very minimal edgewear, otherwise tightly bound, clean throughout, and excellent. In a Very Good dust jacket now protected in a Mylar sleeve. Mild shelfwear and scratching to Mylar sleeve, otherwise excellent. 212 pp. Replete with full-color and black-and-white images throughout. Musacchio provides an in-depth discussion of art objects created during the Renaissance related to and depicting childbirth, including the broader cultural context surrounding them. From the dust jacket: “Mussachio investigates how objects were given, lent, bought, or commissioned as part of marriage and birth rituals and how particular images and objects were regarded as aids to pregnancy and birth…she concludes that childbirth objects served as necessary mediating devices between the real and ideal worlds."