The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Señor Xólotl

Genre: symbolic painting
Technique: oil
Material: canvas
Dimensions: 70 x 60.5 cm
Gallery: Collection of Jacques & Natasha Gelman Mexico City, Mexico

A self-portrait that celebrates the final resolution of the Riveras' marriage. Here Frida is the earth mother/Madonna nurturing the baby she could never have - her "Dieguito'' (Diego Rivera).

As the years went on, Frida took a more and more motherly role in relation to her husband Diego Rivera. He loved to be pampered, and she discovered that playing mother made it easier to indulge his mischief. She confided her maternal feelings to her journal: "At every moment he is my child, my child born every moment, diary, from myself."

In her "Portrait of Diego," written for the catalogue of Rivera's 1949 retrospective at Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts, Frida said, "Women - among them I - always would want to hold him in their arms like a new-born baby."