The representation of the mother in nineteenth-century poetry and painting

Abstract

This article analyzes the representation of the mother figure in nineteenth-century poetry and painting, particularly during the second half of the century, when motherhood became consolidated as the central female role within the bourgeois and Enlightenment ideal. Through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the author examines how both visual arts and literature contributed to the symbolic construction of the mother as the “angel and center of the home,” a moral guide and educator of children. The study focuses on a parallel reading of the poem “A mi hijo dando limosna” by Isabel Prieto de Landázuri and the painting Educación moral. Una madre conduce a su hija a socorrer a un menesteroso by Alberto Bribiesca, highlighting their thematic and symbolic convergence. Elements such as the presence of children, bodily gestures, symbolic objects, and domestic spaces are analyzed, along with the moral discourse of charity and ethical formation transmitted from mother to child. The article also contextualizes nineteenth-century art criticism, emphasizing its tendency to prioritize moral content and subject matter over formal aspects. It concludes that poetry and painting operate as complementary discourses that reinforce a shared female ideal and social model, revealing the close relationship between art, literature, and cultural values in nineteenth-century Mexico.