Treasure Score!

[operafantomet]

I think it's just the style of dress that makes it look like that. If you look at the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait, you can see the same thing. It's just fabric bunched up.

I agree with you there. Many DO look pregnant, but it's probably a combination of

1. the silhouette pre-stays / pre-stiffened bodices, which sported a high bust, a narrow waist and a rounded belly, and
2. men being used to see women with a round belly cause the "natural" course of event was that women became pregnant once married and often remained so into menopause/death (OK, a bit exaggerated, but you get my point). That's how women looked in public, so male artists would depict woman that way.

But note that the same applies for the virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, and also unmarried women. They definitely would not be depicted as pregnant, it would not be decorum. Similar silhouettes/bellies are found in naked Venuses, Eves and graces, which are also unlikely to be depicted as pregnant. Look at these:

http://www.abm-enterprises.net/artgall2/botticelli_threegraces.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Niklaus_Manuel_Deutsch_002.jpg
http://www.lib-art.com/imgpainting/9/5/12359-darmstadt-madonna-hans-the-younger-holbein.jpg

I totally agree that they look pregnant, to my modern eye. But I've come to accept that portraits and paintings rarely DO depict pregnant woman, at least not consciously. It's also interesting to see the change in depictions of naked women from when the bodices of the dresses narrowed and/or corsets came into use. The swollen bellies seems to disappear or at least be little prominent. This is of course not due to human evolution, but to how these male painters (and their clients) were used to see women in public.

[Auryn]

I don't think they are made to look pregnant,
I think its evidence of the depiction of beautiful women that were not "skinny" by today's standards.
After all until the last couple of hundred years if you were nice and plump it meant you were well off and could afford servants and cooks and to not do manual labor.

Thank you for all the pictures.
Please keep posting