Through the work of over eighty international artists this book aims to analyze the iconography of motherhood in art and visual culture during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from early avant-garde movements to the present. Whether as a symbol of creativity or as a metaphor for art itself, the archetype of the mother has been a central figure in the history of art, from the Venuses of the stone age to the "bad girls" of the postfeminist era and across centuries of religious works depicting countless maternity scenes. Artists include Rineke Dijkstra, Ida Applebroog, Thomas Bayrle, Umberto Boccioni, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, and many more.