Fouquet gave us a study of eerie perfection. The impressionists captured intimacy. And Cindy Sherman was a witty Madonna in thrift store gown and joke shop breast. A original book called Body of Art chronicles 1500 years of motherhood
There is a fascinating if obvious juxtaposition in Phaidon’s original book Body of Art. Cindy Sherman’s untitled work of 1989,in which she poses as the Virgin and Child of Jean Fouquet’s 1450 diptych, faces the original. Sherman’s version is intentionally, and comically haphazard: Fouquet’s solemn cherubim in demonic colours have been replaced by a charity-shop net curtain,the elegant gown rendered as a jacquard frock from a dressing-up box and – most noticeably – Fouquet’s improbably round breast, offered to an uninterested, or rather stern baby,becomes in Sherman’s version a prosthetic that, if it didnt near from a seaside joke shop, or should have done.
There is wit and sadness in Sherman’s photograph,which is share of her often-imitated History Portrait series; motherhood in Fouquet’s painting belongs in an entirely different emotional frame. From the parodied super-roundness of the Virgin Mary’s breast to the creepily alabaster skin of both Mary and the Christ child, all the imagery is of power. Her breasts echo the roundness of the jewels in her crown: she is unfamiliarly, and outrageously wealthy,the Queen of Heaven with the pomp and finery to match, her mother status the source of her power.
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Source: theguardian.com