Frida Kahlo

Frida's mother was unable to breastfeed her because her sister Cristina was born just eleven months after her. She was therefore fed by a native Indian wet-nurse whom the family had hired for that sole purpose. The relationship between them appears distant and cold, reduced to the practical process of feeding. Because it was the adult Frida who had the memory, the baby has an adult head, and because she could not remember her wet nurse's facial features, she covered her face with a pre-Columbian mask.

The wet nurse does not embrace or cuddle Frida... she displays her like a sacrificial offering. The unfurled blank scroll along the lower edge of the painting suggests that Frida thought of it as an "ex-voto" but never inscribed the scroll. In this painting, Frida transformed the "Madonna and Child" mothering image into an expression of loss and separation from her own mother with whom she never really bonded.