A Visit to the Wet Nurse by Silvestro Lega between Bourgeois Life and Macchiaioli Painting

The theme of the visit to the wet nurse is among the most recurring subjects in 19th-century literature and painting, not only in Tuscany. Within 19th-century society, the figure of the wet nurse played a fundamental role, both for the children's nutritional education and for her function as a status symbol, indicating a social condition typical of the aristocratic and bourgeois environment.