Teaching Nigel Farage the fine art of breastfeeding

Renaissance art rejoices in breastfeeding. Does the Ukip leader think all the paintings of Madonna and child should be banished from UK galleries?

Nigel Farage’s problem with breastfeeding mothers would have baffled anyone who visited a church in Catholic Europe five centuries ago. Perhaps, in fact, there’s an anti-European logic to Farage’s sympathy with establishments that ask women to feed their babies “in a corner” – for breastfeeding is one of the great themes of continental art. Is Ukip going to repatriate all the European paintings of breastfeeding mums from our museums?

Its milk monitors might start their censorship in the National Gallery’s Flemish art section, where a painting done in about 1440 by a follower of Robert Campin shows the Virgin Mary at home with her infant. The chamber is warmed by a fire, and there’s a book – religious of course – beside her as she offers Jesus her breast. It is a superbly natural scene.

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