A painted desco da parto (a birth tray or birth salver) was an important symbolic gift on the occasion of a successful birth in late medieval and Early Modern Florence and Siena. The surviving painted deschi represented in museum collections were commissioned by elite families, but inventories show that birth trays and other special birth objects like embroidered pillows were kept long after the successful birth in families of all classes: when Lorenzo de' Medici died, the inventory shows that the desco da parto given by his father to his mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, at her lying-in, was hanging in his private quarters to the day of his death. A desco da parto need not be specially commissioned; they were produced in workshops in series for stock, often being personalised with a coat-of-ar