Child mortality

VI Born to die and to be reborn

Child mortality rates in the Early Modern period were enormously high. Approximately the 50% of the children born in Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries died before they were ten years of age and, until well into the twentieth century, it was very common that at least one of the children of a couple died in infancy. In this sense, the different monarchs and their consorts also suffered numerous losses; in fact, on some occasions, the children who died outnumbered the ones who survived their parents. For example, emperor Leopold had a total of sixteen children with his three wives, without considering miscarriages and stillbirths. Eight of them died in their early childhood, and two other archduchesses lost their lives before their fifteenth birthday.

During the same period, Louis XIV witnessed the death of five out of the six children he had with his wife, Maria Theresia of Austria. These circumstances led to the production of numerous artworks that commemorated the lives and memories of those children who died prematurely. We can see the portrait of Margarita of Austria lying in state that is preserved at the monastery of the Descalzas Reales of Madrid. The young infanta, one of the daughters of Philip III and Margarita of Austria-Styria, was only six years old when she died. She is portrayed just after her death, wearing a crown of flowers (a symbol of her virginity and purity), and shrouded with the habit of the Order of the Immaculate Conception, as it was usual for the women of the dynasty to be buried wearing the habit of a religious order. [Rocío Martínez]