Endnotes

1.

The work also evokes famous art history icons, among them Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of a fetus, Rodin’s Walking Man, and Degas’s Little Dancer.

2.

The “Birth Madonna” Madonna del Parto, in Monterchi, Sansepolcro, by Piero della Francesca, 1467.

3.

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, VII.

4.

The Nicene Creed (381 C.E.) to which all Christians adhere, regardless of denomination, includes the words “incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried.”

5.

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians, X.

6.

Ephrem of Syria, For the Epiphany, Hymn 2.

7.

Ephrem of Syria, For the Nativity Hymn 3.

8.

Look at Marina Warner’s now-classic, Alone of All Her Sex (Knopf, 1976; Vintage, 1983) for an entire chapter on “The Milk of Paradise.”